


Life Is For The Living

by moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: Everyone Is Gay, Interdimensional Travel, Luvander is a prize plum, Luvander is a treasure and a constant fucking delight, Luvander/Bon Jovi, M/M, Pizza Night, Portals to alternate realities, Raphael is a poetic disaster, Seriously there is a lot of Bon Jovi I'm sorry, all the gay basically, i just want the gays to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 18:34:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7398802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Interdimensional portals have started popping up over the Cobalts, and despite Adamo's orders to stay well away, Raphael manages to strand himself and Natalia in an alternate reality for a week. There, he gets a surprisingly warm welcome by alternate versions of the airmen, who are all very friendly and very gay. When Raphael has to go back to his world, it is a heartbreaking goodbye, but he is armed with a killer pizza recipe, an arsenal of rainbow flags and Bon Jovi songs, and the knowledge that in another world, Ivory loves him back...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Seven Wild Nights

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and chapter title) is from a Bon Jovi song (One Wild Night). I apologise in advance for these airmen.
> 
> I don't think there are any obvious trigger warnings, there is some minor homophobia but most of that is Rook's fault. If you think I should add anything here or have any questions before reading, please let me know.
> 
> I appreciate feedback!

There were two things the airmen had been told by Adamo to never even fleetingly consider doing when out on their dragons. One of them was crashing in Ke'Han territory. The other was flying too close to one of the portals that sometimes appeared above the Cobalts for a few days after the Ke'Han mages unleashed a particularly potent bout of weather magic on them, which was both vexing and convenient, because it meant that their magicians had exhausted themselves for a while and their troops were more vulnerable as a result, but it also made raids a lot more precarious, because the portals tended to suck up anything that came near them, and no one knew where they led. The most prominent theory was that they connected their world to different dimensions, which was a fancy way of saying that there could literally be anything waiting on the other end, and no one was going to try and find out.

Raphael was not usually in the habit of disobeying his chief sergeant. In fact, he was so busy keeping his head down and following orders that the thought of approaching a portal hadn't even once crossed his mind, and when the raid siren sounded barely half an hour after sundown that night, he dropped his book in surprise and scrambled to get his uniform. He was out with Adamo, Ivory and Jeannot tonight, a full complement of dragon types, and there was a storm brewing on the horizon, though it looked like a natural rather than a magical one. Raphael let Natalia sail ahead, keeping one eye on the dark, swollen underbelly of the clouds and one on the mountains below, scouting for troops. Up here, thunder was a tangible thing, vibrating through Natalia's joints and making Raphael's skin crawl, and the noise was deafening, which was why Raphael nearly cried out in fright when Cassiopeia suddenly rose soundlessly beside him, the ashy grey gloom of her scales barely visible in the dark. They'd circled an encampment on a lower mountain ridge, and Cassiopeia was rearing to rain fiery hell upon the unfortunate souls in the camp, diving the second Adamo gave the sign. Raphael remained further up, watching out for trouble, and was distracted by a particularly violent bolt of lightning in the distance when he saw the portal, made up of a different kind of darkness than the night, great and gawping like a hungry mouth and far too close to Cassiopeia's thrashing tail. Without thinking, Raphael spurred Natalia into a rapid descent, his shouts to Ivory going unheard over the roar of the storm, so the only way he had of getting his attention was to physically herd him away from the portal.

He didn't see the catapult until it was too late. There was the familiar whizzing sound of something fast and vicious being released into the air, and in the process of getting Ivory and Cassiopeia away from the portal and avoiding the projectile which was oozing dark magic and would probably do its own bit of wreaking destruction on the Ke'Han camp when it landed, Raphael swerved too close to the portal himself. He was just scraping past, already on a steep tangent away from the portal when he felt the inexorable pull. Natalia wheeled around in mid-air with a yelp, and then they were flying right through the opening, and for a moment, Raphael thought they'd plunged into water, but then Natalia landed with a crash and he got thrown over her head, hitting soft grass a few feet away.

Raphael had his hand on his dagger before he'd finished pulling his face out of the dirt and coughing his lungs free. He half expected an army to descend on him, but there was a quiet, sloping meadow gently surrounded by trees that swayed in a cool breeze. Once the roaring in his ears had died down, he could hear the soft beehive of voices further up the slope, and he yanked off his flight goggles and whipped around to find a group of people coming to meet him at a leisurely stroll.

The first to reach him was Ghislain, and Raphael breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, fuck me sideways,” Ghislain said, arms crossed over his enormous chest. “That's definitely a first.”

“A first... what?” Raphael asked, still catching his breath from the impact. Other airmen started to crowd around him, including Adamo, Jeannot and Ivory, though they all looked distinctly un-sooty, and the storm had cleared out completely, leaving the night sky scrubbed clean and sparkling with stars overhead.

“Interesting,” Jeannot muttered. “I've never seen Raph with his hair that tame. Or a metal dragon for a pet, for that matter.”

“Where is Raph, right now? Think we should tell him? We don't know yet just how much it's going to fuck with reality to have two of the same people in the same world, maybe they shouldn't actually be in the same place at the same time,” said Luvander, who didn't look like Luvander, because he was wearing a lurid pink shirt and had a rainbow-coloured garland in his hair, and was somehow smaller and skinnier than Raphael remembered.

“He's in Morocco,” Magoughin offered, his hair short and curly instead of the dreadlocks Raphael was used to. “I don't think he's coming back any time soon.”

“Is your dragon friendly?” Ivory asked, the first to address him, stepping forward curiously. His eyes were on Natalia. The other airmen were silent as they waited for Raphael's response. Raphael swallowed and clenched his hand around the handle of his dagger, sure that Adamo, the real Adamo, would be very unimpressed with him if he tucked it away right now, no matter that these people were supposed to be his comrades, even though they clearly weren't.

“I,” Raphael said, licking his dry lips. “Where am I?”

“Oh, kiddo,” Adamo sighed, hands on his hips. “You're very far from home. That portal you just came through brought you to our world – it does that, sometimes, but you're the first visitor we actually know.”

“We got Bon Jovi once, don't forget that, Chief,” Luvander interrupted smugly.

“Doesn't count,” Niall said immediately from where he was leaning on Luvander's shoulder. “We've never met his counterpart in this world, and if we did, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't sleep with you -”

“How do you know that?” Luvander exploded, and the chief cleared his throat loudly to end this confusing discussion.

“Anyway,” Adamo said, “the portal's closed now, but the good news is they usually reopen within a couple of days, maybe a week. So you can go back to your world.”

“And until then, we'll be happy to be your hosts,” Luvander purred, indicating himself and some of the other airmen. “You see, we own the house up there, which comes with the twin burden and benefit of having this exciting interdimensional back door in the garden, so we see it as our duty -”

“It's _not_ your duty to sleep with everyone who comes through -”

“If you mean Bon Jovi, I was merely _assisting_ with his sexual awakening,” Luvander waved this away innocently. Raphael still wasn't sure who Bon Jovi was supposed to be, or what they were talking about, but he figured it was one of those insider jokes that you only understood if you'd been there when they were created. “Either way, we have got a spare bedroom fully stocked with clothes of different sizes, there's a barbecue in full swing up in the garden that you can partake of, and some of us will probably be available for tours of our handsome town, depending on your interests. We might even be able to set up your dragon in the garage if we clear out Ghislain's bike first. All we ask is that you not murder us in our sleep, and tell us amusing anecdotes about the world you come from.”

“That – that's very kind of you,” Raphael managed to say, and awkwardly slid the dagger back into its sheath. It was lucky that Natalia moved to support him as she did, because his knees decided to have a little crisis at this moment, and he'd had enough humiliating experiences of falling down in front of his comrades to last him a lifetime.

“What do you think?” he murmured to Natalia under cover of a new squabble breaking out between Luvander and Niall – that, at least, was very familiar – and Natalia nuzzled his face and breathed a tiny plume of smoke.

“Do we have any real alternative?” she pointed out, a thin thread of amusement in her voice. “Besides, we can still burn them. I don't think they have dragons here, so I am definitely the biggest and baddest around now.” She preened, and Raphael had to laugh a bit, leaning his head against her warm scales. He jumped when he saw that Ivory had come up beside him and was briefly afraid that Natalia would be startled into attacking him, but she sat very still as Ivory reached out a hand and tentatively stroked her golden snout.

“What a beauty,” he murmured, and Raphael swallowed and nodded and couldn't quite reconcile the loose, relaxed limbs and happy, unguarded face with the Ivory he knew, who was just as handsome, but in a colder, far less inviting way. The only times Raphael had seen his Ivory smile was when he was about to flick a lit match in Luvander's drink or pull his knife on an unpleasant person at the pub, and, once, when Raphael had accidentally witnessed him reverently stroking his piano in the common room.

“Her name's Natalia,” Raphael muttered, wary of this other Ivory with his dancing eyes and his floppy hair and his too-wide clothes. “She's – we all fly dragons, in my world. There's a war. I mean, yours is called Cassiopeia.” He trailed off, something dry and ticklish in the back of his throat all of a sudden, something like laughter at the oddness of the situation.

“Cassiopeia,” Ivory repeated eagerly, “you'll have to tell me all about her. Come get cleaned up, and then you can have some food and wine with us, and I'll show you your room.”

“Thanks,” Raphael croaked, and rubbed at his itchy eyes on the way up the slope, leaving Natalia to curl up in the grass and watch the stars as she complained she never got to do in the pens. The garden was slightly overgrown and had a few haphazard vegetable patches and fruit trees dotted around it, and there were tables in its centre piled with candles and food, and a bonfire pit with a pile of sticks and a crate of squidgy white fluff nearby that Ivory explained were called marshmallows and very good for toasting over the fire. He pointed Raphael to a water tap by the house, and Raphael washed his hands and face there, then let Ghislain and Magoughin steer him over to a table and sit him down in the middle with a plate full of grilled meat, potatoes, corn and salad, and a tall glass of something frothy that turned out to be beer. Raphael, abruptly ravenous, shovelled food in his mouth and told the curious crowd around him about the dragons and the airmen, careful not to reveal anything that Adamo would classify as potentially sensitive information, and when, after second helpings and more beer, nothing disastrous had happened yet and the others were still clambering over each other with questions about their counterparts in Raphael's world, Raphael started at last to relax.

The house belonged to Ghislain, Magoughin, Jeannot, Luvander, and Ivory, with the others all living somewhere nearby or, in Raphael's counterpart's case, travelling the world. It was late by the time Raphael got tired of talking, and one by one, the party broke up, all of them wishing Raphael a good night and insisting he do something or other with them the next day. In the end, there were only the six of them and Adamo left, who got out a bottle of whisky and passed glasses around to anyone who wanted some. The candles on the tables were burning low, tiny pools of syrupy light dribbling over their faces and reflecting off the glasses, and Raphael felt sleepy and warm and not quite ready to go to bed just yet. In the rearranging of seats, Ivory had ended up next to him on the bench and was pressed flush against his side. Raphael wanted to warn him that his jacket was probably sooty and would stain Ivory's nice shirt, but his tongue was too heavy to form words anymore, and Ivory and Luvander were in the middle of telling Raphael about some of the other interdimensional visitors they'd had, giggling over some incident or other, and Raphael was loathe to interrupt that.

“My Ivory doesn't giggle,” he told them, squinting into his empty whisky glass. Maybe he'd had a little too much to drink. “My Ivory is always, mm, always grumpy and knifey and. Fire, he likes fire. A lot.”

“I do like fire,” Ivory hummed, poking at the molten wax in one of the tea candles until Luvander slapped his hand away.

“ _He's_ also grumpy in the morning,” Luvander pointed out, pouring Raphael another measure of whisky. There'd been a boozy, creamy dessert at some point, with coffee-drenched biscuits and a lot of dark chocolate, and Raphael needed to ask him what it was, so he could make it at home. “Not so much if he got laid the night before. Maybe your Ivory should try that some time.”

Raphael had to laugh, because the thought of suggesting this to his Ivory was hysterical, and he also couldn't imagine his Ivory going out and attempting to charm a girl into his bed. He didn't even know if his Ivory did sex at all. He never went with Rook and the others on their weekly trip to the Fans, but then Ivory was a loner, and joined almost no group activities unless they involved playing darts with knives or playing the piano while the others made up rude versions of the songs.

“Pretty sure I would get stabbed if I told him that,” Raphael said solemnly, and knocked back his whisky.

“Stabbed _how_ ,” Luvander wanted to know, making Ghislain and Magoughin chuckle and Ivory hide a grin in his sleeve. Raphael, try as he might, could not suss out the joke.

“You know,” he said, picking up one of the knives left on the table from the meal and making stabby motions with it in the air. “Like this.” There was more good-natured laughter, and Ghislain thumped Raphael on the back.

“Does he, ah, does he do that often, then?” Luvander inquired.

“Not to me,” Raphael shrugged, “at least, not yet. You never know. He's done it to others though, which I know, because we once got in trouble for it. There was a brawl. Chief doesn't like us brawling.”

“Fascinating,” Luvander said, chin in his hands, and waggled his eyebrows in Ivory's direction, getting a balled up napkin in the face for his trouble. Raphael briefly wished this was how his airmen solved their arguments too, instead of brawling and stabbing and trashing the common room and making it hard to read in his room with all the noise.

Adamo called bedtime soon after and Raphael helped carry dirty dishes into the kitchen, then went down to Natalia to say goodnight. Ghislain offered her the garage, but she wanted to stay out in the open, and when Ivory showed Raphael up to his room, he was relieved that he could see her from the window, her tail curled happily around a tree. He took a shower to scrub the rest of the soot off, careful to rinse the tub after, brushed his teeth with a spare toothbrush and put on borrowed pyjamas that Ivory had taken out of the wardrobe in the guest room.

“Bon Jovi wore these for two nights,” Ivory told him with a wink, “and then Luvander – happened – and they've been washed since, of course, but still. One Wild Night, and all. Or two, in this case.”

Raphael nodded, confused, and when he came out of the bathroom, Ivory told him he liked his hair much better loose like this and reached out a hand to run his fingers through the curls at Raphael's temple. Usually, the airmen tended to mock Raphael for his unruly hair, and only copious amounts of hair wax and a strong leather band could keep it in check, which Raphael had now tied around his wrist for safe-keeping. He shivered slightly at Ivory's cool touch and closed his eyes. Possibly, he would wake up tomorrow and find he had dreamed all of this after drinking too much Ke'Han wine, and everything would go back to normal, except for the hangover.

“Sleep well, then, Airman Raphael,” Ivory told him softly, brushing his fingertips down Raphael's jaw for a moment. “Have sweet dreams about stabbing,” he added, except Raphael had to have misheard that, because stabbing definitely wasn't sweet.

“You too,” he said, and went to his room, proud when he didn't fall over despite feeling dizzy from the alcohol, though the room had been rearranged in his absence, and then Ivory called him back and directed him to the one opposite.

“That one was mine,” he grinned, “not that I'd object to letting you sleep in my bed, but you seem a little drunk, and I'm not sure you're like my Raphael at all.”

Raphael went to bed thinking about that possessive pronoun and wondering what Ivory's Raphael _was_ like. Perhaps not as clumsy, in which case, good for him.

*

Breakfast the next morning was a bit of an odd jumble. Raphael felt bleary-eyed and out of sorts in borrowed clothes, his hair a misbehaving riot of curls since he hadn't found a brush to tame it and his leather band had disappeared in the night. It was raining, an ugly smear of drizzle on the windows, and Raphael had tried the wrong door twice before he'd found the kitchen again. Ghislain was making cardamom coffee, humming something that sounded like a sea shanty, and this scene, at least, was so familiar to Raphael that he was confused again for a moment where he was, but then Magoughin crowed “morning, traveller” from behind a newspaper, and a strange appliance popped out two slices of toast.

“Bottoms up,” Ghislain said, pressing a cup of coffee on Raphael, which was also unusual, because Ghislain didn't usually share his coffee with anyone other than Magoughin and Jeannot. Raphael sat down gingerly at the kitchen table, which was laid out with toast, scrambled eggs and bacon in a huge pan, thick slices of sticky marmalade cake, and leftovers from the barbecue last night, including Luvander's boozy coffee dessert. Jeannot was perching on the window sill in paisley silk pyjamas with a plate of it on his knees, peering out at the rain.

“Will your dragon be alright in this weather?” he asked. Ghislain and Magoughin both spooned food on Raphael's plate at the same time, then had a little cutlery fight across the table, which Ghislain won. Magoughin shrugged and went back to his newspaper.

“She's used to much worse,” Raphael said quietly, picking at a slab of marmalade cake. “Ace got struck by lightning once.”

“Of course,” Jeannot nodded, like this was a regular occurrence. Knowing Ace, maybe it was.

Raphael sipped his coffee and slowly ate his breakfast to Ghislain's and Magoughin's approving nods. Jeannot reached over and turned a radio on, though Raphael had never seen one quite like that, and music he didn't know crooned out of the device and filled the room. Breakfasts at the Airman were only ever this quiet when more than half of them had a hangover or when Raphael was the only one up after a long night. Weirdly enough, he almost missed the noise.

“Nothing I like more than hearing my Jon Bon's lovely voice first thing in the morning,” Luvander announced when he showed up half an hour later, clad in a short, thin, silky bathrobe with trailing sleeves that left most of his legs exposed. Raphael, who was used to sharing showers with his fellow airmen when they were covered in soot, caked in mud and smeared with grease, couldn't fathom why he was so unsettled by the glimpse of Luvander's tight little underpants when he stretched, but then the Luvander he knew wasn't normally in the habit of wearing rainbow-coloured codpieces, or whatever the thing was.

“He's not your Jon Bon in this world,” Ghislain reminded him, passing him a cup of coffee. “When are you and Niall going to get your shit together so we never have to hear about that time Bon Jovi gave you a blowjob ever again?”

“Cute,” Luvander snorted, “like that's going to happen. A, Niall and I are friends, and B, I am never going to stop talking about my Bonjob. Ever. Best day of my life. Hey, Raph, want to hear about the time Bon Jovi gave me a blowjob?”

“I – who is, I mean,” Raphael said, stumbling over the words. “Who is that?”

Luvander thrust his thumb at the radio and sang a few lines of the song, which seemed to be something about prayers. He then wriggled off his chair, abandoning his toast, and added a little dance to it that involved a lot of gyrating his hips around Ghislain, who hummed along cheerfully but changed the lyrics from _prayer_ to _gayer_. Raphael watched, open-mouthed, but when both Magoughin and Jeannot joined in for a heartfelt chorus, he had to admit that the tune was incredibly catchy. Perhaps it was a sort of national anthem in this world. The song ended, and Luvander took a bow as the others clapped and climbed back on his chair to finish his toast.

“ _That's_ Bon Jovi,” he said happily. “And he gave me a blowjob.”

“I... see,” Raphael said, not seeing at all, and quickly scanned the kitchen for something to change the subject to. “Is Ivory up yet? I could bring him some coffee maybe...”

“Better make him some green tea from that tin up there,” Ghislain smirked, pointing at a shelf. “He might give _you_ a blowjob if you manage to get it right.”

“How – how do I get it right?” Raphael asked nervously, not wanting to upset this Ivory with badly made tea. He had yet to see a knife on him, but he'd only been here for one night, after all.

“Someone is keen,” Luvander muttered under his breath as Ghislain gave Raphael instructions on how to make Ivory's tea. Raphael took care to follow them to the letter and made a second cup for himself while he was at it, wanting to try Ivory's favourite tea, then took both mugs and slipped out of the kitchen while the others were distracted arguing over which radio station Jeannot should switch to next – Luvander wanted more Bon Jovi, Magoughin wanted something jazzy, and Ghislain jokingly suggested something called death metal, which Raphael had a feeling might appeal to the dragons, if only for the name.

Raphael dithered a bit on the landing, not sure anymore which one was Ivory's room, and then he had to knock with his elbow because both of his hands were occupied. There was a small silence, then a sleepy, slurry “c'mon in!” and some shuffling, and Raphael nudged the door open and stood a bit awkwardly in the door frame until Ivory mewled “tea?” in a hopeful voice and stretched out a hand.

“Ghislain said, um,” Raphael mumbled, handing over one of the cups and looking around for somewhere to sit. Ivory scooted over on the bed and patted the mattress beside him, and Raphael perched shyly on the edge and took a sip of his tea. “He said you liked this one best.”

“I do,” Ivory smiled. “Thank you. Did you sleep alright?”

Raphael nodded. “It's really nice of you guys to take me in like that... Pretty sure the airmen I know would've laughed in my face and told me to rent a room at the Fans.”

“The Fans? Is that a hotel?” Ivory asked. Raphael felt his cheeks burn and wished he hadn't brought it up.

“Something like that.”

Rain clicked its gentle paws against the window. It had cooled down considerably over night, despite it being summer, and after the steamy warmth of the kitchen downstairs, Raphael shivered a little in the thin cotton shirt he'd found in the wardrobe of the guest room. Ivory saw and reached over to grab a green knitted cardigan from the back of his desk chair to offer to him, and Raphael took it, but didn't quite dare put it on.

“It's not going to stab you,” Ivory grinned. His hair stuck up wildly around his face, rivalling Raphael's own, and he had minuscule dimples in his cheeks when he smiled that Raphael had never noticed before.

“Can I ask you something?” Raphael forced himself to say. Ivory nodded and drank more tea, waiting patiently for Raphael to gather up his words. “It's just that, well, Luvander said – but I don't know if – I mean, I don't actually know you guys, and, maybe I'm wrong.”

“You still haven't asked me anything,” Ivory pointed out cheekily.

“It's none of my business,” Raphael said quickly. “I was just wondering if Luvander was. Well. I mean, he is very... flamboyant.”

“Flamboyantly gay, if that's what you were wondering,” Ivory said without hesitation. “The Bon Jovi thing isn't a metaphor. As a rule of thumb, if Niall and Luvander say something dirty, it's not a metaphor for something innocent, though if they say something innocent, it is usually a metaphor for something dirty.”

“Ah,” Raphael made. He blinked rapidly a few times and stared at his empty teacup as if it was going to reveal some fundamental truth about life to him if he looked hard enough. “The Luvander in my world, he's not – I mean, I wouldn't know. But I don't think any of them are.”

“They might just not be out,” Ivory said softly. “Nothing wrong with that. Our Luvander is very, very out, but that wasn't always the case. It's no one's business but one's own to decide when or if they want other people to know.”

“Yes,” Raphael found himself saying somewhat desperately, “yes, that's right. And sometimes there are – reasons – for not telling anyone.” He could hear an echo of Rook's voice, attaching the word cindy to everything he disagreed with, could hear Niall and Jeannot smugly joking about pillow-biting, could see the sneer on Evariste's face whenever anyone suggested he fuck the fidgeting out of Merritt since they'd obviously tried everything else.

“Absolutely,” Ivory murmured. For some reason, one of his hands was cupped around Raph's. “And even if there are no obvious reasons, it's still okay to wait until you're ready. I didn't come out to my brothers until I was eighteen. They already knew by then, of course, but that's not the point.”

Raphael couldn't speak for a long moment, but Ivory was kind enough to look out of the window until he'd got himself back under control. “Is – in your world, is it – do people not -” he asked clumsily, clearing his throat to try and dislodge the itchy tightness still wedged there. Ivory looked a bit sad.

“It depends where you are,” he said carefully, propping one arm on his knee. “Here, it's a lot better than in other places. But even then it still depends what sort of environment you grow up in, work in, and so on. I guess I'm lucky in that respect, my family never gave me grief, and you've met my friends. Luvander had it worse, growing up. But he lives here now, and we have places to go and people who accept and love us... Hey, you know what? Why don't we take you out with us tonight, there's a club in town that's – well – palatable.”

“Sounds nice,” Raphael whispered around the lump in his throat. “I should go, um, check on Natalia.”

“Sure,” Ivory smiled, “and I should shower and get dressed. We can show you around town later, maybe get some crumpets for tea.”

“I'd like that,” Raphael told him, and then went to spend some quality time with his dragon, who had made friends with some trees and idly stretched out her wing to shelter him from the rain. The sky was a greenish grey, like creeping lichen on rock, and Raphael breathed in the damp air and huddled in Ivory's cardigan, which smelled clean and citrusy and not like home at all, but soothing in the way that distant places could sometimes be when home wasn't an option.

“Natalia?” he whispered, peeling a wet leaf off her snout. “If I were, I mean, if. If I had feelings...”

“You always have feelings,” Natalia snorted and gave him a playful nudge. “Don't ask me if I'll stop loving you for getting yourself into some petty human entanglement or other, it'll embarrass us both.”

“Fine,” Raphael pouted, “I won't ask. Will you let me take one of the others for a ride if they want to? Ivory, maybe?”

“Ivory, maybe,” Natalia mimicked slyly. “Balls and thunder, Moonbeam, tuck your messy little heart in before someone steps on it.”

“Will you, though?” Raphael whispered, stroking her neck.

“Anything for you, Moonbeam,” Natalia grinned, and pushed him over into the mud with a cackle.

When he came back inside, Luvander took one look at him and ran him a hot bath, pouring in at least three different fragrant soaps, and Ghislain pointed at a bookshelf in the living room and told him to knock himself out. Raphael had a tiny dance of glee when he was gone, spent fifteen minutes futilely trying to choose, then just closed his eyes and pulled out a book at random before submersing himself in pine-scented bubbles and a story about an eleven-year-old boy wizard going to wizard school. His bath was lukewarm by the time he remembered to get out, and Luvander made him a hot chocolate in the kitchen with a knowing look at the book clutched in his hands and said “ahhh, Harry Potter, good stuff,” before introducing him to television.

In the afternoon, Ivory and the others took him out for tea and crumpets at a nearby café, and Raphael almost choked on his last bite when the Esarina walked in, dressed in a grey tailored suit and tie. He was still coughing when she came over to their table and chatted to Jeannot about something called Pride, borrowing someone's napkin and a pen to draw out a few diagrams, until she was called over by a woman who looked like the Margrave Antoinette, except that she had shaved the sides of her head and both of her arms were covered in tattoos of the like Raphael had only seen on sailors before.

“What has got into you?” Luvander asked, amused, as Raphael wheezed and squirmed. Magoughin slapped his back and said something about how Ana was a beautiful lady, but very much lesbian and taken, which only caused more coughing on Raphael's end.

“That was,” he said slowly when Ivory had passed him a glass of water and he'd recovered enough to speak. “In my world, that woman is... um. Royalty.”

“Oh, so it's a bit like when we met Bon Jovi for you right now, is it?” Luvander asked eagerly.

“Not everything is about Bon fucking Jovi, Luv,” Magoughin drawled, an accent of some sort coming through, and Luvander purred “mm, isn't it though” at him and put his head on Magoughin's shoulder, batting his eyes at him.

Over by the counter, the Esarina was passionately kissing the Margrave Antoinette, and Raphael had to put his own head on Ivory's shoulder to cope with that.

They went home again after splitting the bill, Raphael feeling awkward that he couldn't contribute, and Magoughin and Luvander made an aubergine stew for dinner that was delicious even though it didn't feature any meat. Raphael did the dishes and then went back to his book while the others readied themselves for a night out. This process was, if not in its intricacies, largely familiar to Raphael, who had spent many nights at the Airman trying to drown out the noise of a dozen other men showering, singing, squabbling and bragging that accompanied it and focusing on his book. He rarely went with them, because letting Rook and Compagnon drag him to the Fans could only end in disaster, and the only other options were the theatre district with Niall and Luvander, whose tastes were rather more frivolous than Raphael's, or getting horrendously drunk with Ghislain and Magoughin, who were notorious for having the highest alcohol tolerance of all the airmen and liked to start (and end) pub brawls with no regard for the consequences. Here in the shared house, there was also a lot of singing involved in getting ready, though considerably less talk about the sort of girls they were keen on tonight or the amount of rum they could get Ghislain to drink before his weather forecasts became less than eerily accurate. It was Ivory who came to find Raphael, looking squeaky clean and pristine in a grey shirt and very tight trousers rivalled still by Luvander's purple velvet ones and Jeannot's paisley print affair. He leaned in the doorway and held up a few garments slung over his arm.

“These are for you,” he said, “Comps brought them over earlier, he's about the same size as you.”

“Oh,” Raphael said and slipped a scrap of paper between the pages of his book before getting up to take the clothes. “Thank you. Should I...?”

“Yes, do,” Ivory said, but made no move to leave. Raphael, who was used to shared showers and Niall running around naked whenever he pleased, felt suddenly self-conscious about changing in front of Ivory, so he turned around and laid the clothes out on the bed. There was a pair of trousers made out of a coarse blue fabric, the kind that many people seemed to favour in this world, though they looked much tighter than what Raphael was accustomed to, and a short-sleeved shirt in a handsome dark green. The shirt, too, felt tight on him, but when he turned around and presented himself to Ivory and Luvander, who had sneakily joined them while Raphael had been getting dressed, the two made appreciative noises and clutched a bit at each other.

“Too damn handsome,” was Luvander's verdict. “Let's make him more gay.”

Raphael barely had time to wonder what that could possibly imply before the two of them had sat him down and gone to work on his hair and face. Ivory massaged something fruity smelling into his curls while Luvander smudged paint and glitter around his eyes and over his cheeks, and Raphael dug his hands into his thighs and let them, secret little thrills trickling down his back like beads of sweat at this treatment. When they were done, Luvander fetched a mirror and held it up in front of him, and Raphael saw that he'd lined his eyes in smoky black and applied a subtle sheen of gold glitter in strategic places, which reminded Raphael of Natalia's black and gold face and made him square his shoulders. His hair, while still curly and messy, looked like it was like this on purpose, and Raphael wanted to ask Ivory how he'd achieved that, but then Ghislain walked past the open doorway, gasped and clutched his chest, and called Magoughin and Jeannot to ogle Luvander's and Ivory's proud handiwork, and soon after, Luvander shooed them all out, because the others would be waiting for them at the club.

“Hang on, I need to Instagram this,” Luvander said at the door and pulled out one of the small rectangular devices that Jeannot had explained were phones, though Raphael hadn't quite grasped the whole concept of them yet. Luvander quickly arranged the group around himself, leaving Ivory pressed up tight against Raphael's side, one arm casually slung around him, and held up the phone. “Say dick cheese, everyone!” There was a click, and Luvander squinted at the phone and nodded. “We look smart guys, let's go break some hearts.”

“Raph doesn't know what he's missing,” Jeannot smirked, looking over Luvander's shoulder. “He'll be in Marrakesh, moping around and wondering why he ever left us. First he wasn't there for Bon Jovi, and now he's forfeiting the opportunity to snog a hot clone of himself.”

“And give poor Ivory an aneurysm?” Magoughin laughed, locking the door behind them. “Can you even imagine?”

“I'm right here,” Ivory grumbled. Somehow, his hand had found Raphael's in the narrow space between them and was squeezing it.

“Well, you're having a break, aren't you? So there's really nothing that would theoretically keep you from having a delicious double Raph sandwich with Ivory filling,” Luvander said, “although, would it even count as cheating if you're fucking one of your boyfriend's alternate selves?”

“Boyfriend?” Raphael asked weakly, but Ivory decided abruptly to remove them from the conversation and walked ahead to ask Ghislain if they could swap shifts on Monday. As far as Raphael had understood, they all worked for Adamo, rowing tourists up and down the river on small boats. Jeannot had told him that it was called punting, but there had been a lot of lewd jokes about that, so Raphael wasn't sure if he hadn't just pulled his leg and punting was actually something deviant and uncouth.

The club was a big, crowded space with low, coloured lighting and thumping music oozing from all directions. Raphael got a stamp on his hand but couldn't read the smudged letters in the dim light and was pushed further in with the flush of newly arrived people, holding on tight to Ivory's hand so as not to get lost. There were galleries running along the upper part of the walls, and Ivory led him up narrow stairs to one and let Ghislain cleave a path through the crowds to a table held by Compagnon, Merritt and Evariste while Magoughin and Luvander went off to buy drinks. They came back with trays of tall glasses filled with an array of rainbow-coloured liquids and fruit stuck decoratively to the rims, Niall and Ace in tow, though Raphael had to do a double-take, because it turned out that Ace was a girl in this world – a boyish and skinny looking girl with unevenly cropped hair who sat with her legs split wide and cursed with the best of them, but definitely a girl.

“The Ace in my world is a guy,” Raphael told her, struggling to make himself heard above the music, and Ace shouted “wicked!” and went back to stealing everyone's straws so she could make one big mega-straw to stick in Merritt's drink across the table.

Raphael's stomach seized up again when Amery joined the group a little later, hair slicked back and wearing a scuffed leather jacket, something that looked like a shark tooth dangling from his ear. He clapped hands around the table and squeezed himself in between Ghislain and Luvander, who stroked his jacket and whispered something in his ear that made Amery laugh.

“Is Rook working tonight?” Amery wanted to know, clinking his beer with Ghislain's.

“Yup, got us free drinks,” Magoughin said. “Didn't you see him at the bar?”

“No, I was too busy arguing with Balfour over why he couldn't have one of those vile chocolate banana cocktails. Sometimes I doubt he's related to me, man.”

“You brought Balf? Where is he?”

“Met some friends from uni. Got himself a stinking great First Class, did I tell you? To think of all the hours I spent fielding his nervous breakdowns.”

The fist that had closed around Raphael's stomach kept squeezing. It had been a year since the Amery from his world had fallen to his death in the mountains, on a raid with Ghislain and Adamo, who'd been stony-faced and silent when they'd come back with bloody hands from handling Anastasia's reins. She'd fallen into a sort of unresponsive stupor after that, not even reacting when Luvander sang her favourite pub songs at her, and only perked back up when Adamo had brought Amery's younger brother in, a sweet, shell-shocked kid with more guts than was good for him, because he'd taken on the job and was still there even after months of abuse from the others, especially Rook, who'd had a strange, puppy-like attachment to Amery and was more than a little unhinged in the weeks following Amery's death.

Raphael was glad that in this world, Balfour got to keep his older brother a little longer.

Soon after, there was a general movement downstairs to dance, which Raphael was reluctant to join, because he only knew his own world's formal dances and even with those was prone to fall over his own feet more than impress anyone. He stayed behind with Ace, Merritt and Evariste, who were playing a game called Tuesdays bingo on beermats, where you had to fill out squares labelled “robot dance,” “token straights checking out a gay club” or “sex with clothes on” and won if you had a complete row of filled out squares. It took Raphael a while to get the hang of it, though it was quite educational.

“Why is it called Tuesdays bingo?” Raphael wanted to know after winning a round thanks to “angry patron spilling their drink on Niall,” which seemed to be a rather regular occurrence owing to Niall's seemingly universal awfulness.

“'Cos we're on Tuesday Street, and this club's called Tuesdays, darling,” said a voice behind him, and Raphael turned to find Luvander leaning over him, the rainbow he had painted on his cheek before they left now a messy smear of colours. He pressed another drink on Raphael, something potent in a small shot glass, and when Raphael gave in and drained it, Luvander patted his shoulder and said “good boy, now come dance with me.”

“I'd rather not,” Raphael tried to tell him, but Luvander wasn't listening.

“It's the rule, honey, your grace period's up. Don't worry, we've all seen our Raph dance, you can hardly do worse. There, that's better, up you get.” Luvander took his hand and led him down the stairs and into the heaving mass of people. Ace had skilfully demonstrated what a robot dance was to him earlier, and Evariste was a firm believer in just moving one's head in time to the music, but Raphael was still at a loss watching the other people around him, until Luvander pulled him close by his belt loops and showed him how to move his hips.

“See? Easy,” he shouted, grinning, and then he was kissing Raphael, his lips surprisingly cool and pliant under Raphael's own, and Raphael stopped moving altogether and just stood there and let it happen. He'd kissed a lot of girls in his life before becoming an airman, enough to reliably judge that Luvander was a very good kisser by those standards, though there were no kisses with boys in his repertoire that he could have compared it to.

“Oops,” Luvander giggled when they eased apart again, right by Raphael's ear. “Sorry, sorry, it's just, I'm a bit drunk and you're really pretty and I really, really like kissing pretty boys.”

“Um, thanks,” Raphael managed to say, then he got jostled by a nearby dancer, who turned out to be Niall, and Raphael left Luvander to Niall's rapidly gyrating hips and excused himself to the bathroom.

He walked around a bit after that, sticking to the perimeter and watching the dancers but not really seeing. There was glitter on his shirt and he tried to shake it free but it only clung to his sweaty hands. He spotted Ghislain, unexpectedly graceful and skilled, spinning Magoughin around who was laughing uproariously. Rook was juggling drinks by the bar, and Luvander and Niall had disappeared somewhere in the crowd. Raphael wished he had kissed Luvander back properly. His head felt heavy and woolly from the alcohol, and when Ivory appeared by his side, glitter in his hair and on his collarbone, Raphael wanted to kiss him, too.

“Alright?” Ivory leaned in close to ask, one hand on Raphael's shoulder. Raphael nodded and tried to catch Ivory's hips by the belt loops like Luvander had done to him earlier, but he missed and his hands landed on Ivory's hipbones instead, cupping them.

“Ivory,” he said, “I think I'm gay? Or... the other thing? Bi?”

“No kidding,” Ivory laughed, wrapping both of his arms around Raphael's neck and pulling him away from the wall, moving his hips in time to the music.

“I've never slept with a man,” Raphael admitted into the downy hair at Ivory's temple. His skin felt warm and slightly damp under Raphael's hands. “I wish I had.”

“Mm, well, you can still do that,” Ivory hummed, tenderly nuzzling Raphael's jaw. “You could do it tonight, even. With me. If you wanted.”

Raphael did want, and told Ivory so by kissing him, making it count in all the ways that kissing Luvander hadn't. He felt like there was a little bee in his stomach, buzzing around happily, and like every time Ivory touched him somewhere, a flower grew from his insides. Possibly, this wasn't so much Ivory's doing as the alcohol's, but he hadn't had any since the shot Luvander had brought him, and he actually felt like its effects were starting to wear off.

“Let's go home?” Ivory suggested, linking their hands and squeezing. Raphael squeezed back. They left without telling anyone, though Ivory used his phone to send a message when they were outside. The air was soft and humid and a thin, ragged veil of clouds was obscuring the stars in patches. As they walked, still hand in hand, Ivory hummed a song under his breath, sometimes adding words to it which were to do with a bed of roses, and Raphael assumed that it was a love song and couldn't help his stomach scrunching up a little in joy. He'd never had anyone sing a love song to him before.

“Do you want to ride my dragon?” he broke the silence when Ivory had trailed off. Abruptly, Ivory laughed, though it wasn't a malicious sort of laughter.

“Is that a metaphor, Airman Raphael?” he smirked, looking up at him through lowered lashes. Raphael blinked and nearly fell over his own feet.

“I – no – that wasn't – I meant Natalia?”

“Yeah, right,” Ivory grinned and winked. “I definitely want to ride your dragon. And also Natalia, if she'll let me.”

Raphael's head still felt a little woozy, and because the streets were deserted and because he didn't want to be tipsy for his first time, he said “now?” and followed Ivory around the house to where Natalia was half-hidden in the trees like a giant metal snake, looking like a part of the night sky had come to live among the trees, the light gold scales dotted around her hide a mischievous starry gleam in the dark.

“Natalia,” Raphael called, and the dragon looked up from where she had been examining what Raphael now saw was a black cat. The cat gave Natalia's snout a little headbutt before slinking off toward the garden, and Raphael's heart swelled in his chest with fondness. Out of all the dragons, Natalia was perhaps the most docile – Ivory had compared them to felines once, to panthers and lions and jaguars and wildcats, and Raphael had shamefully neglected to mention that Natalia sometimes purred when he gave her a headrub. Now, he felt proud of this marvellous creature, who could burn down whole villages if she wanted to, but preferred to make friends with house-cats instead.

“She smelled like this one,” Natalia informed Raphael eagerly, nudging Ivory with her nose. “I think he is her human, like you are mine.”

“That was Jackie,” Ivory said, “she came through the portal when she was a wee kitten and refused to ever leave again.”

“Is it always – friendly things, that come through?” Raphael asked hesitantly.

“Mostly, yeah,” Ivory shrugged. “Once we had an invasion of gnats, that wasn't so nice. We got rid of them eventually, though.”

“Why don't you just move somewhere else?”

“Can't afford it,” Ivory said lightly, stroking Natalia's flank. “We bought the house cheap after the owners discovered the first portal. There was a lot of paperwork involved and we have to report anything that comes through, but so far it's all been harmless enough. Well, we might have to downplay Natalia's exact nature a bit...”

“Just say she was another cat,” Raphael smiled, “she certainly behaves like one often enough.”

Natalia puffed up her chest and shook out her wings at those words, and Raphael quickly went back inside the house to fetch his leather jacket and flying goggles for Ivory to put on, and an old overcoat he found in the guest room for himself. Then he gave Ivory a leg-up into the saddle and hoisted himself up behind him, and Natalia clawed her way up the slope so as not to damage any trees when she took off. A lazy breeze curled around them as Natalia spread her wings, and then they were soaring above the small wood behind the house, and Raphael had his hands cupped around Ivory's on the reins and steered them out and away from the outskirts of the town and deeper into the night.

“This is better than riding on Ghislain's bike!” Ivory laughed, leaning back against Raphael and looking up at what was visible of the stars. The dragons were built to glide noiselessly, and all they could hear was the rush of air and the faint rumble of traffic in the distance. Raphael was used to the exhilaration of flying, the stomach-clenching lung-squeezing feeling of endless space around him, the speed and the cold wind and the faint dizzying headache that came with being so far up, but it was always honed sharp with anticipation of the impending raid or dulled down by exhaustion on the way back. He'd never flown simply for pleasure before.

“Is it better than sex?” Raphael called back cheekily.

“I'm not answering that until we've had sex,” Ivory replied just as cheekily, and for the rest of the ride, Raphael was a little distracted, earning him an irritated flick of Natalia's tail when he nearly steered them into a large pine tree. He turned back then, not wishing to run into any of the others when they got home, and Ivory talked him sneakily into a few reckless dives and spins, murmuring filthy promises in Raphael's ear in return.

“I can't believe I get to ride one of them in your world,” Ivory told Raphael after they had left Natalia in her little tree nest at the edge of the garden and gone back inside. Natalia had been frugal with fire and smoke, so there was only minimal clean-up necessary, for which Raphael was giddily grateful. “I mean, I wouldn't swap, but still.”

“Yours is even bigger than mine,” Raphael said, to which Ivory quirked a wicked eyebrow that did all kinds of things to Raphael's stomach. “Your _dragon_. Still not a metaphor.”

“Can we get to the metaphor now, though,” Ivory purred, and so they did.

Ivory's bed was big and surprisingly untidy, piled high with pillows and blankets that Ivory all shoved to one side as he climbed in, naked and slightly damp from a quick wash, late night moonlight shimmering on his skin like silk. He went down on Raphael first, his tight and skilful mouth making him squirm on the mattress, and that was something Raphael wanted to try reciprocating, though Ivory stopped him halfway through to teach him the kind of fun that could be had with a bottle of lubricant short of any actual fucking.

“First times should be gradual,” he told him when Raphael said he wasn't averse to the actual fucking, “let's hang around at this level for a bit first.”

At the end of that, Raphael came with a keening gasp, fingers biting into the sheets, and Ivory hid a smile in the crook of his thigh and peeled the condom off for him, because Raphael was too busy catching his breath.

“My turn,” Ivory suggested gently, and handed over the bottle.

Raphael wasn't conscious of any of their housemates returning while he and Ivory were occupied in Ivory's bed, and he didn't encounter anyone afterwards when they took turns in the bathroom either. Ivory made it clear that he was welcome to share his bed and they fell asleep quickly, tangled loosely in each other and the fresh sheets Ivory had exchanged for the used ones. In the morning, neither of them was very keen on getting up to fetch tea, but when Raphael lost a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors which he wasn't sure Ivory had just made up for this express purpose and padded down to the kitchen in a pair of underpants and Ivory's cardigan, the others were all there and awake, lounging smirkingly on various surfaces and greeting Raphael with a cheerful “morning, stud” and clinking their coffee cups together.

“So, on a scale of _hungover, hungry and heartbroken on a Monday morning_ to _spent all night getting deliciously demolished by a hot alternate version of his absent not-boyfriend_ , how grumpy is Ivory at this moment?” Luvander asked, perching on a countertop with his hair half an explosion on one side of his head and glitter lining the pillow creases on his face.

“The latter,” Raphael said, “just without tea.”

Magoughin approvingly handed over two mugs already filled with green tea and winked, then told him to get out before Luvander had recovered from his apoplexy of delight and regained the power of speech, advice which Raphael wisely followed.

“Bad news,” he sighed when he slid back under Ivory's blankets and passed one of the mugs into Ivory's waiting hands.

“Did you run into the Spanish Inquisition downstairs?” Ivory asked.

“The what? I mean, I did run into your very inquisitive housemates, particularly Luvander.”

“Mm, yeah, that's what I thought,” Ivory said and put his head on Raphael's shoulder. “Did they give you grief for debauching me when I'm supposed to be saving myself for my other Raphael?”

“No,” Raphael said, frowning, and put his tea down. “What, um, if you don't mind my asking – what is going on with you and, well, me, in this world?”

Ivory sighed and squirmed and removed his head from Raphael's shoulder, gazing a little forlornly down at his tea. “We were together, sort of,” he admitted, mouth pulled sharply to the side as if a part of him was trying to keep the words locked up. “We never really – never really said the word _boyfriends_ , but that's kind of what we were? And then Raph went away and we had this long talk about how neither of us was ready for a relationship just yet and, well. Bit of a train wreck, really. Long story short, we're not together right now, so I'm perfectly within my rights to comfort myself with the occasional shag. I'm sorry, I probably should've told you that before we slept together.”

He looked a bit pained and both of his hands were clamped tightly around his mug, even though he seemed perfectly calm otherwise. Raphael tugged one of Ivory's hands away and linked their fingers on top of the blanket, marvelling briefly at the difference between Ivory's long, skinny, knobbly fingers and the broadness of his own, the contrast of their skin colours, the rough callouses on his fingers from Natalia's reins and the softer ones on Ivory's from playing the piano.

“The Ivory in my world doesn't like me very much,” Raphael confessed sadly and swallowed. “I hope the Raphael in yours knows exactly what he's missing right now, because he's the luckiest fucking sod in all the worlds out there if he could have you.”

There was a long silence, and when Raphael dared to look up, he saw to his shock that tears were running down Ivory's cheeks. He must have made a noise, because Ivory squeezed his eyes shut with a grimace and hid his eyes in his free hand, though the other was still clutching Raphael's in a tight grip.

“Sorry,” he sniffed, “it's just, you're so like him.”

“I hope he's less of a chronic embarrassment than me,” Raphael tried to joke, and Ivory made a noise that was mostly a sob but also a tiny bit of a laugh.

“You're not a chronic embarrassment,” Ivory said, removing his hand. His eyes were red and his face was wet with tears, but he was smiling now. “You make excellent tea and you have a dragon and you're really good with your fingers. I might jump ship permanently if you don't watch out.”

“I do have to go back sooner or later,” Raphael said quietly. “I'm not convinced my Corps isn't going to come haring through the portal looking for me if I don't show up again. They can't afford to lose a dragon.”

“What about her rider,” Ivory asked, something hard and brittle to his voice that sounded almost protective.

“They've replaced one before,” Raphael muttered, “I'm sure they could do it again.”

“No,” Ivory snapped, “no, I don't think they could. You're not replaceable. I'm sure Natalia would agree. Okay?”

“Okay,” Raphael smiled, more out of surprise at Ivory's sudden vehemence, then moved their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Ivory's spiky knuckles. “How long does it usually take for the portal to reopen?”

“About a week, give or take.”

“Well, then,” Raphael said, “I want to learn as much as I can in the time I've got, and you started teaching me some very valuable skills last night, but I'm anxious I might have already forgotten them again...”

“Oh no,” Ivory said softly, “you'd better practice then, hadn't you.”

“Yes,” Raphael nodded, “my thoughts exactly.”

*

True to his word, Raphael committed himself to learning a lot of things in the other world. Apart from an enticingly intimate knowledge of Ivory's body, he learned how to brew different kinds of tea he hadn't tasted before, how to fold a small dragon out of paper, what sort of lube to favour for which endeavour, and how to take something called a selfie. Jeannot showed him how to ride a bicycle, which ended in grass stains and scraped knees for Raphael, so he didn't try out the contraption called skateboard that Compagnon brought over one afternoon, but Rook and Amery managed to convince him to ride a rollercoaster with them at a fairground outside town. Raphael had thought it couldn't be much different from flying, but discovered how wrong he was after the first ascent – apparently being able to steer the blasted machine you were plunging into an abyss with made all the difference to whether you threw up in the bushes after or not. Amery won a small stuffed black and white bear for his brother at one of the booths after that, and Raphael decided to teach him some skills of his own that he had acquired playing darts against Ace back in his world, and won a life-sized stuffed leopard that he smugly dragged back to the shared house for Ivory.

Ivory introduced Raphael to his favourite food, which was raw fish and vegetables wrapped in rice and seaweed and didn't sound very appealing until Raphael tried it. Another day, Niall came over laden with shopping bags and put Raphael to work making pizza from scratch for all the other airmen. They'd adopted the name for themselves now, even though they were riding boats instead of dragons, and Natalia happily presided over the brick pizza oven in the garden while the pizzas baked. From Luvander, Raphael learned a repertoire of Bon Jovi songs, how to dance to something called electro pop, and the secret of taming his hair with some of his miracle products, though he wasn't sure if he would be able to acquire any of the sweet-smelling gloop that Luvander patiently massaged into his curls when he was back in his world. After a very intense card game, Ghislain won the privilege of taking Raphael on a punting tour, which raised a lot of eyebrows and stabbing-related jokes again, and then he and Magoughin taught him the card game in question and Ace taught him how to cheat at it. Some things were apparently the same across dimensions.

Raphael did his best to pay them back for their efforts and expenses by helping around the house and garden as much as he could. He went grocery shopping with Magoughin and Luvander and got lost in the biscuit aisle, helped Ghislain weed the vegetable patches shirtless in the baking sun while Ivory and Luvander watched appreciatively from under a big umbrella, sipping cool drinks, and helped paint giant banners for the Pride event while Jeannot educated him on its history. When Ivory had a migraine, Raphael offered to take his shift on the river for him, a learning experience that turned out to be very wet and humiliating until he finally managed to stay on his boat and Adamo allowed him to take on a few passengers.

For six days, Raphael was busy and happy and barely slept, spending his nights either in Ivory's bed or reading in his own. The portal stayed elusive, a fact that Raphael was both relieved and unnerved by, though Ghislain assured him that it wouldn't close until he'd gone back through (“or until we chuck some old boots in, which is what we did when that cat came through and Ivory had a meltdown over wanting to keep it”), and so they couldn't miss it even when they were all out.

On the seventh day of his stay, the house woke up early to bright sunshine and dry, blue skies, and erupted into a flurry of activity and rainbow flags. Raphael looked out of his window and, when the grass beyond the garden was still devoid of interdimensional portals, allowed his stomach to squeeze itself up into a tiny ball of excitement that he would get to join the Pride parade with the others. Luvander flitted in and out of rooms with face paint and jars of glitter, and there was something so comical about seeing big hulking Ghislain in a tight shiny leather onesie with cardboard fairy wings strapped to his back that Raphael had to excuse himself until he could breathe again through the laughter. Ghislain winked at him when he came back, and dropped a rainbow flower crown on Raphael's head.

Some of them split off to go to work, where Adamo and Amery had decorated the boats and were offering special Pride tours that went under the bridge where the parade crossed over the river. Raphael went with the others to march in the parade, holding Ivory's hand and chanting shyly along, a feeling like soap bubbles and confetti in his chest because he was allowed to do this, and he had friends with him who didn't judge or mock him for it, and Ivory by his side, laughing and swaying and kissing him where everyone could see. At some point Rook came to foist Balfour off on them, who complained loudly that he could look after himself, but Rook cited Amery's insistence that they not let him out of their sight, and Raphael offered him a piggyback ride, noticing that he had some trouble walking and that both of his hands were deeply scarred when Balfour took his gloves off to shake some glitter out of them.

“He was in a motorcycle accident a while ago,” Ivory told him after Ghislain had taken over piggyback duties, “Amery blames himself, because it was his bike. Balf's a trooper though, you wouldn't think it looking at him, but he's more badass than his brother. Rook says he's got balls of steel, that's a big compliment coming from him.”

“I can believe that,” Raphael said, watching as Ghislain spun Balfour in a circle, faster and faster until he screamed with laughter. “It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?”

They passed Niall and Luvander dancing on one of the wagons, both wearing little more than underpants, sunglasses and shoes, Niall with a hat pulled low in his face and a glittery bow-tie and Luvander with a matching waistcoat and tie. Ivory wolf-whistled at them and they gave him the finger, grinning and breathless, and just as Raphael was going to suggest joining Jeannot, who was with a fellow group of trans and genderqueer people, Niall yanked Luvander forward by his tie and started to make out with him.

“Do they do that often?” Raphael asked weakly, gaping as Luvander responded enthusiastically, and Ivory laughed and shrugged.

“Yep, about once a month. It's usually part of some sort of competition or other. One day they'll wake up and realise that they've actually been together all along, but probably not until they're old and unable to go partying anymore.”

To Raphael's great distress, the Esarina and her girlfriend decided to come over and walk with them then, and he had to resist the urge to fall on his knees before them and embarrass himself. It was late afternoon when the parade finally dispersed, leaving the town dotted with rainbow stripes and scraps of glitter everywhere as people descended on the cafés for refreshments, examining sunburns and the state of their make-up, and the airmen all congregated by the river in the cool shade of Adamo's boathouse where they were provided with beer and lemonade from an ice cube filled wheelbarrow and bags of crisps and salted nuts. Raphael lay in the long grass, the blades sticking to his sweaty skin, Ivory's head on his shoulder and their legs idly tangled, and wished he could stay in this place forever.

The sun was setting by the time they went back to the house, Ghislain and Magoughin with their arms around each other, singing loudly, the other airmen all trailing in their wake, their arms full of food for the barbecue they had planned or carrying crates of beer between them. There was a feeling of static in the air as they approached, and Raphael squinted at the sky in search of impending storm clouds, but found it calm and undisturbed, illuminated richly in red and orange by the setting sun. Next to him, Ivory and Luvander exchanged a weary look that didn't make sense to Raphael until he helped Compagnon carry an extra table into the garden and saw Natalia pacing warily at the end of the garden, her eyes on the ashy black hole that had opened up at the bottom of the slope.

“Looks like this'll be your goodbye feast,” Compagnon told him bracingly, patting his back once they had set down the table. He went back inside to get chairs, leaving Raphael paralysed on the edge of the vegetable patch he'd helped weed just the day before and staring down at the portal. He'd hoped for just one more night, one more day.

“There's no rush, you know.” He turned around to find Luvander leaning on the garden fence. He'd changed into a pair of shorts and a Bon Jovi t-shirt, but his hair was still shimmery with glitter, and there were several prominent hickeys marching up his neck that, probably, Niall was responsible for. “It won't close tonight, unless you go through.”

Raphael nodded and swallowed thickly, then went back inside to help with the preparations and very firmly didn't look at the portal again while they set up the barbecue and distributed the food. There was the usual teasing and joking, some singing when Evariste and Rook brought guitars and Ghislain produced a mouth organ, boozy dessert served by Luvander and Jeannot and a fruit platter arranged in a rainbow of colours by Magoughin, and all throughout that, Ivory never left Raphael's side. Night bloomed up around them like clouds of pollen, and when the others gathered around Adamo's bonfire with shisha pipes and marshmallows, Ivory tugged on Raphael's hand and they quietly slipped away one last time to Ivory's room.

They didn't speak, except to reassure each other that what they were doing was okay and welcome. Naked and chilled in the cool stillness of the house, Ivory climbed into Raphael's lap with two condoms and lube and let him prepare him, then lowered himself on him and guided them into a slow, rocking rhythm that made the bed creak under them, holding Raphael's face in both hands and kissing him deeply. He, too, sucked a delicate pattern of bruises into Raphael's skin as he clung to him, the soft, minuscule sounds that Raphael had become so attuned to spilling from his mouth and filling up the silence alongside Raphael's gasps and moans, and Raphael couldn't help whispering the words he'd forbidden himself from uttering until then, over and over, heart bursting with fondness for the way Ivory keened and bucked, for his slightly crooked knees and his long skinny toes clenched in the sheets, the dip of his collarbone, the sharp points of his teeth. They reached climax almost at the same time, and Raphael said it again, _I love you_ , because he deserved to hear it at least this one night.

Afterwards, Raphael took a shower to wash off the sweat and the glitter and the rainbow paint, tied his hair back and dressed in the clothes he had arrived in.

Ivory waited for him on the landing, wrapped in the dark green t-shirt Raphael had worn the day before and some loose cotton trousers, and offered his hand. Together, they went back downstairs and into the garden, where a solemn mood had settled on the airmen, and Luvander was waiting with a cup of tea and a large, bulging bag slung over one shoulder.

“This is for you,” he said as Raphael gratefully accepted the tea. “Some souvenirs to remember us by. We've been collecting things we thought you might, ah, appreciate back home. Don't open it now, open it when you're safely there and alone.”

“Thank you,” Raphael said, his voice cracking halfway through, and took the bag with trembling fingers. “Thank you, for everything. I should...”

There was a heavy silence, their faces lit oddly by the candles and torches that flickered in the unnatural churning air coming from the portal. As if by an unspoken signal, they all moved down the slope at the same time, Raphael still holding on to Ivory's hand. He reached Natalia and adjusted her reins, made sure the bag was secure around his shoulders, and turned to say goodbye.

 


	2. Never Say Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is also a Bon Jovi song.

Raphael couldn't remember how he got back to the Airman, but he must have flown, because the portal spit him and Natalia out over the Cobalts, and they touched down in the pens some time after midnight. His heart was pounding and his limbs stiff and frozen, and he clutched the strap of the bag Luvander had given him as he slid off his dragon and nearly crumpled on the floor. The familiar smells of grease and metal and smoke rubbed their heads against him like cats welcoming back their owner. The handlers on duty came running over from where they had been scrubbing floors and polishing flight gear, shouting things that Raphael couldn't quite untangle and make sense of. Erdeni curiously stretched her head over the wall that separated her pen from Natalia's, and Yesfir, who was opposite, nearly set a handler's hair on fire in a flutter of excitement.

“What the _fuck_ ,” said a voice that rang out above the din. “What the _fucking fuck_ do you think you're doing?”

Raphael felt like he was being ripped in two when Ivory strode into view. He wasn't wearing flight gear, so he must have been hanging out with Cassiopeia, perhaps unable to sleep, perhaps sick of the others up in the common room, and he looked livid. He crossed the space between them with large, fast strides and seized Raphael by the collar of his jacket, crowding him back against Natalia, who growled and breathed sparks.

“A _week_ ,” Ivory hissed, “you've been gone _a week_ , we all thought you were _dead_ , not to mention Natalia, what the fuck were you thinking flying into that wormhole, I had things under control -”

“Ivory!” Another voice crowded out the commotion caused by the handlers and the other dragons, and Raphael watched with mounting dread and exhaustion as Adamo marched down towards them, a grave look on his face the like of which Raphael hadn't seen since the day Amery had died. “Enough. Release him.”

Ivory reluctantly let go and took a step back, standing at attention. Raphael held on to the strap of his bag and let Natalia hold him up from behind for a moment before moving to present himself to the chief.

“Reporting back for duty,” Raphael said weakly, and for a long while, Adamo simply scrutinised him, arms crossed in front of his massive chest.

“My office,” he barked at last, “now.”

Raphael was a little relieved to get away from Ivory, who still looked furious and pale in the low light of the pens, though it pained him to be separated from Natalia so soon. He left her to the handlers with an apologetic glance over his shoulder and followed Adamo up the stairs and to his office, where he stood and fretted silently while Adamo poured himself a whisky from a flask he kept in his desk drawer and sat down.

“So,” he said, knocking back his drink in one go. “Care to tell me where the bastion-blasted fuck you've been?”

He pointed at an unfinished letter on his desk, addressed to Raphael's family, regretfully informing them that he was missing in action. Raphael opened his mouth and found his throat closed up like he'd swallowed a mouthful of ash. He coughed, adjusted the weight of the bag on his shoulder, and stared at the ground. “The portal,” he finally managed to mutter, “it sent me to – a different world. I was well received there. My hosts looked after Natalia and me until the portal reopened tonight and I came back.”

He felt bone-tired after uttering these words, but Adamo didn't let him go until he'd painstakingly told him everything he was willing to divulge about his stay with the other airmen. After Raphael had hoarsely recounted his return to the Airman, his chest growing tighter with every word, Adamo looked at him again for a long time, and finally sighed.

“Go to bed,” he told Raphael wearily, “I've got a shitload of paperwork to fill out because of you. Ivory swears you were trying to warn him about the portal before you got sucked in, so I'm not going to feed you to Proudmouth for disobeying my orders, but know that you're on very thin ice here. Dismissed.”

Raphael merely nodded and went to his room.

There, he locked the door behind him, opened the window and took off his clothes, sending them down the laundry chute. He washed over the sink in the corner, his tired muscles shaking with the effort, and climbed into his bed naked, not quite ready to wear his own clothes again after a week of borrowed comforts. He dozed fitfully for a few hours and got up at the crack of dawn, the light too bright in his eyes, went into the deserted kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and tiptoed back to his room with it, where he picked up the souvenir bag and, one by one, arranged its contents on his bed.

There was a book of poetry with a note from Ghislain, saying that the Raphael from their world regularly cried over Keats and so he thought he might appreciate him as well. Luvander had sneaked a jar of hair product into the bag for him, Niall had written down the recipe for his acclaimed pizza, Magoughin had parcelled out all of Raphael's favourite teas into small sachets with notes on how to brew them, and Jeannot had included a beautiful drawing of Natalia lying at the foot of her favourite tree. The giant box of condoms and bottle of lube wrapped in a rainbow flag made Raphael laugh, as well as the poster of Bon Jovi, rolled up and tied with a glittery ribbon and bow with a note from Luvander that cheekily warned him not to get any bodily fluids on it. From Ivory, there was the green cardigan Raphael had been so partial to and which still smelled like him, and Raphael spent a long time burying his face in it and inhaling the lemony scent. He put it on and unwrapped a stack of sheet music that Ivory noted his counterpart might like to try out if Raphael could get him to accept it, and a whole tin of Ivory's favourite green tea. He had also included detailed instructions on how to make sushi and a sly remark on how he might try and woo his counterpart with it, but Raphael's stomach hurt at the idea, and so he put them aside for now and pulled out the last items in the bag. Adamo had donated a bottle of high quality whisky, wrapped carefully in layers of newspaper, which Raphael thought might raise him in the chief's esteem again if he could bring himself to share it. Amid some assorted chocolate (“to cure any potential sadness about leaving our amazing, sparkling gay world behind”), some apple and mint flavoured shisha tobacco, a recipe for Luvander's tiramisu, and a wayward jar of gold glitter, Raphael found one last rectangular parcel wrapped in pink crepe paper and settled back against his pillows to open it, surrounded by the shiny, joyful debris of the past week. He felt bruised and homesick, tears stuck in his throat which was hurting with the effort of keeping them in.

The effort proved futile, in the end, when he unwrapped the photo album.

They must have made, or at least finished it on the same night Raphael left, perhaps while he and Ivory had been gone, because it included pictures from the Pride parade, and on the very last page was one of them kissing in the grass on the riverbank that very afternoon, Raphael's flower crown askew and Ivory laughing into the kiss, their faces glittery and their hands entwined between them. There were a lot of photos of the two of them being cosy and silly and close, and some group pictures as well as ridiculous shots of all the other airmen separately, posing for Raphael and pulling faces. One showed Luvander and Niall both pulling down their trousers and waving their naked arses at the camera, another page had Raphael's failed attempts at selfies, yet another bore evidence of their pizza night, and there was a whole series of pictures dedicated to Luvander's adoration of all things Bon Jovi and Ivory asleep on the sofa with his cat curled up on his chest. Raphael had been familiar with the concept of photographs even before he'd come to their world, but the ones in his tended to be grainy, brownish grey and dull. Luvander's pictures were full of colour and life, and he could almost hear an echo of their laughter looking at them. Luvander had painstakingly labelled every single photo and decorated everything with a lavish expanse of rainbow-striped tape, and by the time Raphael came to the last page, he was sobbing uncontrollably, and had to put the album down so as not to ruin it with his mess.

In the very corner of the last page, Ivory had written “I love you too” in neat, cramped handwriting.

*

It took Raphael a whole day to gather his strength and venture outside the nostalgic safety of his room for food. He took a deep breath, packed away his treasures from another world, picked up Adamo's bottle of whisky, and locked his room firmly behind him before making his way to the kitchen for a sandwich. The other airmen were scattered over the sofas and armchairs in the common room, squabbling over the next week's rota, so Raphael had at least time to eat without getting accosted by them, then he piled some glasses on a tray and carried it into the common room, half expecting to be ignored. An unusual hush fell over the others when he approached, though, and Raphael put the tray down on a table and held up the whisky.

“Anyone care for an interdimensional drink?” he asked timidly, cowed by their gazes, but then chatter broke out again and they were all crowding around the table, and Raphael busied himself pouring them all shots, including a large one for the chief who'd come by to check that the heavily disputed rota was still in place and hadn't been vandalised with darts and drawings of dicks (it had). Raphael breathed a sigh of relief when Adamo declared it good stuff and gave him a hard pat on the back.

“Dear Raphael,” Luvander announced somewhat ominously and slung an arm around his shoulders, twirling his empty glass in the air. He had the same affected mannerisms as the other Luvander, and Raphael couldn't help but wonder why none of them had thought of him being gay yet beyond the usual baseless teasing that every single airman got from Rook whenever they did something less than manly. Whether this Luvander was interested in men or not, he had been very skilful at evading or shutting down these sorts of accusations so far, and Raphael felt a certain kind of respect and envy for this feat, since he himself was frequently the target of Rook's homophobic scorn. “Our illustrious chief here has been very unforthcoming on the details of your recent absence. Why don't you sit down in this comfiest of armchairs and tell us all the saucy details while we drink this excellent whisky and welcome you back into our midst like you deserve.”

All of Raphael's better instincts screamed at him to run, but he let himself be bullied into the armchair with a second glass of whisky, and started, tentatively, to answer the others' questions about the world and their counterparts as well as the more ludicrous ones like how many women Raphael had slept with and whether or not Natalia had eaten anyone. After a while, there was wine, and Magoughin and Niall brought food from the kitchen, and Ivory, who had been playing irritated melodies on the piano, finally condescended to perch on a nearby armchair and listen as well. Perhaps Adamo had given him grief for not seeing the portal and letting Raphael get sucked into it that night, or perhaps he was just annoyed that Raphael had survived and he had to endure his pathetic, bumbling existence in his presence again, but he still seemed oddly subdued even after a glass of wine, and went to bed early.

“You know what, I'm really tired,” Raphael seized this opportunity to say for the third time, and at last managed to extricate himself from Luvander's unquenchable curiosity and Niall's and Compagnon's continued demands to describe what sort of girls and outlandish sex practices the other world had to offer.

He met Ivory in the corridor on his way to the bathroom and tried to think of something placating to say, but then Ivory frowned, stopped and asked “do we have the same cardigan?” in a puzzled voice, staring at one of the uneven elbow patches that someone had long ago sown onto the cardigan Raphael was still wearing. A hot mix of panic and thrilling excitement churned in Raphael's stomach at the words and he quickly tried to move his elbows behind his back and out of sight.

“I – maybe? Are you off to bed, too? You're on tonight's rota, aren't you? Well, good night, I – it looks like rain, be careful out there if there's a raid – I mean – good night,” Raphael babbled nervously, walking slowly backwards and away from Ivory, not willing to risk being within stabbing distance when Ivory's confusion started to wear off.

Back in his room, he threw himself on his bed and took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. He was still thrumming with tension and almost wished he was on the rota, too, so he could go out with Ivory again and also work off some of the anxiety about being at the centre of his comrades' volatile attention for so long and having to harbour so many disastrous secrets inside himself without having anyone to tell. He tossed and turned for a while, then grabbed Jeannot's drawing of Natalia and went down to her pen with a mug of Magoughin's spice tea with milk, and stayed curled up against her warm flank until he finally felt sleepy enough to go back to bed.

There was no raid in the night, yet Raphael could only doze fitfully. He felt like death the next morning and spent most of the day in his room, pleading a hangover, and unpacked his gifts again, lining them up on his bed like gems and burying himself in Ivory's cardigan. He ate some of the chocolate, then felt sick because he had skipped both breakfast and lunch in favour of hiding from the other airmen. Heartsick and tired, he dreamt of the shared house in another world with its cosy kitchen, its shelves of unread books, its private bathtub, its welcoming inhabitants. By dinnertime, he was crying over the photo album again, and didn't answer when Balfour knocked on his door to ask if he wanted some toast.

The next day, Adamo informed him through the door that he'd put him back on the rota and he'd better be ready and in the saddle the second the raid siren sounded tonight. Raphael managed to sneak into the kitchen unseen and filled a basket with food to take back to his room, then curled up in his armchair by the open window with the poetry book and, true to Ghislain's prediction, cried a little more over that. The raid siren didn't come, but he stayed up anyway, and only drifted off in his armchair in the small hours of the morning with the breeze on his face, carrying the scent of the pine trees outside.

The day after that, he made pizza.

He woke up late in the morning feeling groggy and sticky and vile, so he dragged himself to the showers, put on fresh clothes and used some of Luvander's magic hair product rather than tying his hair back like he usually did. Somewhat revived, he made himself a cup of Ivory's favourite tea and had a small breakfast, then he put on his jacket and pulled up the hood against the drizzle and walked to the nearest market in town with the vague idea of scouring the tea stalls for something similar to the fragrant green in Ivory's tin. When he'd bought two packets of tea and some trinkets to send home to his family, he found himself staring at the produce in the vegetable section of the market, remembering how Magoughin had arranged slices of peppers and olives into the shape of a pair of breasts on his pizza and Niall's vigorous insistence that it was actually a butt, and before he could stop himself, he was filling up a basket with all the ingredients he could recall.

He spent the afternoon making pizza dough, kneading until his arms ached and everything in his immediate vicinity was covered in flour. From time to time, one of the other airmen stuck his head into the kitchen, surveyed this, and left again muttering to himself about strange habits, but by the time the first pizza was in the oven that night and the mouth-watering smell had started to drift down the corridor, the looks on their faces had changed to avid interest.

“What wild foreign sorcery is this,” Niall gasped theatrically as Raphael beckoned him into the kitchen and dished up a slice of the first pizza for him to try, since Niall had been the expert in the other world, and he wanted an honest opinion. “Are you trying to poison us all with – delicious – yeasty flatbread with – goodness, how many more of these have you got?”

“I reckon about ten,” Raphael said calmly, peering under the cloth that was covering a portion of the dough that was still rising. “Possibly more.”

Niall let out a bellow that summoned the rest of the group, and one by one, they were supplied with slices of pizza fresh out of the oven under Raphael's careful surveillance. He tried to recreate their favourite toppings, prawns for Ghislain, tender artichokes for Luvander, spicy sausage for Niall, fruit and blue cheese for Ivory, who raised a sceptical eyebrow, but soon asked if he could have a second slice. Raphael stifled a small smile and handed one over while Rook, Niall and Compagnon were duelling with forks over the remains of another pizza, and Ghislain held a plate above Luvander's head so he couldn't squirrel it away.

“Whisky, women and pizza,” Niall sighed reverently when the clamour and the plundering had died down to a happy munching at last and everyone was standing around the kitchen in various states of flour-dusted and sauce-stained dishevelment. “Next time that raid bell sounds, you all are gonna have to physically hold me back before I launch myself happily at the next best portal and take a well-deserved holiday in another reality.”

Raphael's quiet “I never said anything about women” was swallowed up in a chorus of “hear hear”s and variations of “Chief's gonna have your head on a platter with parsley” as well as some rather more sensible people (Balfour) pointing out that the portals might just as well lead to a barren wasteland with no oxygen or water.

“So unfair,” Niall groaned, flicking mushroom pieces at Luvander's head. “Why didn't you bring us back some hot interdimensional ladies, Raphael? Don't you love us? Did you not want to share the bounty with your poor undersexed fellows back home?”

Raphael rolled his eyes and abruptly missed the shabby rainbow glory of the other airmen again, a sour pucker of longing in his guts that made his cobbled together pizza taste flat and uninspired. He stopped paying attention to the bickering and complaining going on around him and poked his last piece of pizza crust around on his plate. It had been four days since someone had last hugged him.

“Are you unwell?”

Startled, Raphael looked up to see Ivory scowling down at him with flour on his nose and the sleeves of his cardigan neatly rolled up. Balfour, Merritt and Luvander were looking at him as well, and Raphael had to swallow down an ugly sound and muttered something half-hearted about being tired and going to bed early. He left the mess in the kitchen for someone else to clean up, or at least until tomorrow, when he felt less like a whole ocean was sitting on top of him, slowly crushing him with its weight.

He was surprised when the kitchen was pristine and tidy the next morning as he went to make himself a cup of green tea to take back to his room. Ghislain and Magoughin were up already, the latter with his feet up on the table, and Raphael was briefly reminded of his first morning in the shared house when Ghislain pushed a steaming mug of cardamom coffee in his hands with one eyebrow arched in silent challenge. Dumbfounded, Raphael took the coffee and sniffed it, but there was no whiff of anything unpalatable indicating a prank, and so he took a tentative sip.

“Niall's made raisin buns,” Magoughin told him, and promptly tossed one at Raphael's head, where it bounced off and got snatched up by Ghislain. Raphael felt even more uneasy when Ghislain, instead of licking it or biting into it, handed it over without protest. Raphael squinted at the shiny, raisin-studded bun like it was about to transform into a live rabbit in his hand at any moment.

“Eat,” Ghislain grunted, ruffling his hair and making it stand on end. “There's no pizza left, and you've been skippin' meals.”

“I, what?” Raphael said, but it was swallowed up in Ghislain humming one of his favourite sea shanties. Feeling wrong-footed, Raphael slowly padded back to his room with his coffee and his raisin bun, neither of which turned out to be poisoned or laced with piss, and around mid-day, Balfour and Evariste managed to coax him out of his self-imposed exile by asking him to settle a dispute about poetry. After that, Raphael moped about in an armchair in the common room, until Compagnon and Magoughin forced him to go on a walk with them and, puzzlingly, bought him a hot chocolate at a café in town.

“Why?” was all Raphael managed to wheeze when Magoughin plonked the tray down in front of him and thumped his back so hard he had to cough.

“Gotta keep your strength up, eh?” Magoughin said amiably. “Also, we thought you were dead.”

“We can make allowances for the undead,” Compagnon nodded, looking solemn.

“Bottoms up,” Magoughin ordered, and Raphael dutifully drank his hot chocolate, spilling some on his shirt in the process, though if Magoughin and Compagnon noticed, for once they refrained from pointing it out.

Back home, Ace challenged him to a game of darts and very obviously let him win. Compagnon told him several very filthy jokes and giggled himself off the sofa in the process. Merritt made toast and offered him the less burnt slices, and Luvander brought back brioches from town, and Adamo gave him an approving nod in the pens after a raid. It took Raphael a while to understand that the other airmen were trying to cheer him up. It was clear none of them really knew why he was miserable, but the fact that they had noticed and that, in a weird, awkward way, they cared, was mind-boggling enough already, and Raphael tentatively spent more time in the common spaces again than cooped up in his room. He stuck the Bon Jovi poster on the inside of his wardrobe, pinned the picture of Natalia up above his bed and draped the rainbow flag over the back of his armchair, shared the shisha tobacco with Ghislain, Magoughin, Evariste and Jeannot when they came back from a raid and Raphael was still up, opening the windows wide to let out the smoke and look at the stars. One morning, Ivory came into the kitchen just as Raphael was making tea from the tin of Zoubrovka green that his other Ivory had given him, and Raphael poured him a cup and wordlessly put it on the table in front of him.

“What's this,” Ivory scowled, narrowing his eyes at the mug. He really was grumpier in the morning, Raphael noted.

“Tea,” Raphael offered. “Good tea. Go on, try it.”

Ivory sat very still for a moment, seemingly engaged in a staring contest with the mug, then picked it up with a look of deep suspicion and sniffed it. Detecting no hint of chilli pepper or dragon oil, he took a tiny sip, eyes still narrowed to slits, and, after a pause, allowed a low, grudgingly appreciative “hm” to roll from the back of his throat like an aborted purr.

Raphael bit his lip and took his own mug back to his room, leaving the pot in the kitchen, and when he came back a little later, Ivory was gone and the pot had been emptied, even though no other airmen were about.

After the success of the tea, Raphael lurked around the kitchen every morning hoping to catch Ivory so they could share a pot of Zoubrovka in companionable silence before the others got up and invariably ruined things. Niall was usually up first, but he had a habit of taking his breakfast down in the pens with Erdeni, or else sneaked into Luvander's room to wake him up in ever new hideous ways until Luvander physically kicked him out. Raphael and Ivory observed this procedure from their perches on the kitchen bench a few times, and, once, even shared a small, secret smirk over it, when Niall ended up with his cup of coffee emptied over his crotch and a swift elbow jab to the solar plexus.

Bolstered by this, Raphael brought some of the sheet music to their next joint pot of tea and left it casually on the table, rearranging it several times for the best angle before Ivory slunk in bleary-eyed and pale, wearing the same cardigan Raphael had hidden away under his pillow in his room, though this one had a few sooty fingerprints on the sleeve and less cat hair stuck in the cableknit pattern. Once again, Ivory's eyes narrowed at the stack of paper on the table, and he poured himself a cup of tea and sat down, pulling them towards him with the tip of his index finger.

“Are those mine?” he asked, squinting, because no one else played the piano in the Airman or used sheet music for their spontaneous recitations of rude songs they had picked up in the brothels and pubs.

“Sort of,” Raphael admitted, “my – the other Ivory gave them to me. He thought you might, um, like to give them a go.”

“Hm,” Ivory said, and went back to his tea and his silence.

That night, Raphael joined some of the others for a game of cards in the common room, but he was distracted when Ivory sat at the piano with a handful of sheet music and stared at the notes for a while without playing. Raphael lost most of his stake in the game and decided to cut his losses, retreating to one of the sofas to watch his co-players being thoroughly cleaned out by Ghislain one by one, and when he'd just relaxed again, Ivory started to play.

It was a song Raphael recognised as _Always_ by Bon Jovi, which the other Ivory had played on his piano one night while Luvander sang along in a clear, beautiful voice, and the other airmen were gathered around them in the last dribs and drabs of candlelight they'd brought in when a light rain had chased them inside from the garden. Raphael's spine seized up at the memory and he felt goosebumps marching down his arms. Ivory played it a little faster now, but without a single hitch, even though it was an unfamiliar melody to him, and Raphael could feel Luvander start to pay attention next to him, his eyes still fixed on the theatre programme Niall had brought in from town, but not moving over the words anymore.

Raphael wasn't as good a singer as Luvander, but he wished with a burning passion in this moment that he could sing along, and found himself desperately mouthing the words.

“What was that, Ivory?” Luvander asked when Ivory had finished, his voice pitched at slightly mocking, though Raphael heard a timbre of genuine interest beneath that. “Was it a loooove song? Did you suddenly develop the ability to have feelings?”

“Fuck off,” Ivory said without heat, and played something upbeat and wicked from his own repertoire instead that sent Rook and Ace whirling around the room doing a Cossack dance and chanting rude things that the other airmen soon joined in on. Raphael was still busy tucking the ragged edges of his heart back in when the ruckus died down a little and Ivory tried his hand at _Bad Medicine_ , tickling out a memory of Luvander and Jeannot doing a duet on the kitchen table in pyjamas, followed by a spirited rendition of _Livin' On A Prayer_ , the first Bon Jovi song Raphael had had the pleasure to be introduced to on that first morning in the shared house. Raphael found himself very quietly changing the lyrics from prayer to gayer under his breath and had to abruptly remove himself to the kitchen and bury his face in his hands to stop himself from doing something incriminating in front of the others. It was just as well, because the next song was _Never Say Goodbye_ , and that one made Raphael cry again, a terribly ill-advised activity in the Airman at best and a death sentence at worst – death by mortification, anyway.

Raphael dealt with it by sticking his head under the tap and running cold water over it.

Balfour found him a little later, hair dripping and shoulders wet, gulping down a measure of something strong he'd found in the pantry, and looked at him in such a knowing manner that Raphael had the uncomfortable urge to pack his bags and move far, far away. The kid was far too sharp for his own good, and, in this case, Raphael's.

“That music,” Balfour said softly, “it's from the other world, isn't it?”

Raphael nodded mutely.

“I like it,” Balfour shrugged. “It's a miracle you got Ivory to play it, mind. What did he want in return? Your left kidney?”

“Just – tea,” Raphael blurted out, wiping the water from his face. “In fact, I was going to make some, but, um, the tap kind of – exploded – haha – Ace must've tampered with it again...”

“Mhm,” Balfour made, looking amused. “Anyway, Luvander is threatening everyone with strip poker, are you in?”

In hindsight, it was a mistake to think that he had somehow got off the hook. Raphael started to relax more around the other airmen, and in consequence managed to keep most of his sadness and yearning for the other world hidden, letting himself indulge in them only when he was locked away in his room with his photo album and a glass of wine or a cup of hot chocolate. Sometimes, Ivory played some of the new music, and Raphael suffered and exulted in silence and left the common room when it got too much. Flying more helped, as did spending time with Natalia, the only other being who shared some of his experiences in the parallel world and who missed her trees and her cat friend. Raphael made a mental note to ask Adamo if he could have a cat the next time the chief was in an amiable mood.

Then, one afternoon, Raphael brought the photo album down to Natalia's pen with him to show her the pictures. She had a lot to say about his shameful behaviour and the indecent clothes he'd been forced to wear, making Raphael laugh and point out that tight trousers and eyeliner were nothing compared to Luvander's daily get-ups, and Natalia teased that she might unravel the bottom part of Raphael's shirt with her teeth if he was so keen on going back upstairs in a crop top.

“How do you even know that expression,” Raphael marvelled, lying on the floor and catching his breath. “They must have corrupted you more than I thought.”

Natalia chuckled and curled up on her side, telling him to get his pathetic pining arse out of her pen now and stop moping about things he couldn't have, like Ivories and eyeliner and crop tops. Raphael grumblingly got to his feet and left, clutching the album to his chest and humming a distracted Bon Jovi song on his way upstairs, thinking about dinner, and when Luvander called out to him from the common room, he didn't see the danger of following until it was too late.

“Raphael, babe, join us a moment, you are just the man we need, you see Niall here and I were having a bet and – oh, what's this, what's this, secrets?” Within seconds, he had plucked the photo album out of Raphael's unguarded grip and was dancing backwards with his bounty held triumphantly above his head. Objectively, Raphael knew that crying out and lurching after him was probably the best method of informing Luvander that he had indeed managed to get a hold of something important and secret, but he couldn't help doing just that, and the brief wild goose chase that ensued around the common room with various airmen coming to Luvander's aid by tripping Raphael up or blocking his path ended with Raphael lying on his face, Ace and Magoughin sitting on him and twisting his arms behind his back, while Luvander balanced gleefully on the back of a couch and held his prize aloft.

“Don't,” Raphael moaned, mouth full of dust, and struggled uselessly against Magoughin's grip and Ace's weight on his legs. He could feel his knee throbbing from where he'd hit it hard on the leg of a table, and he was pretty sure he'd cut his cheek on someone's belt buckle in the scramble.

“What's this, you _don't_ want me to look at this?” Luvander crowed, waving the album in a tantalising half circle. “No, no, it can't have been that, surely what he just said was, yes Luvander, please share all my innermost secrets with everyone present, this is what I keep a cindy diary for, after all, so you can all read it and delight in my shame.”

“It's not a diary,” Raphael tried to say, but Magoughin pushed his face deeper into the rug, and all Raphael could do was watch through one eye as Luvander peeled open the first page with relish, one of his feet planted squarely on Niall's forehead to keep him from coming close and ruining his show. The other airmen settled back into their preferred spots, leaving it to Luvander to narrate the contents of the album.

“Oho,” Luvander began, “so this is what the airmen look like in another dimension, rakish good looks and great hunking pieces of man flesh seems to be on the agenda my dears – same as in our esteemed world, of course.”

There was some tittering laughter and curious shuffling as Luvander displayed the first page, which featured a photograph of Raphael surrounded by all the other airmen from the parallel dimension, standing on the lawn in front of Natalia in the gleaming sun, each one of them making either the peace sign or holding out their middle finger, depending on how they had interpreted Luvander's command of “everyone make The Sign”. Raphael had gone for peace, since he'd only just been taught that one by Magoughin, but next to him, Ivory had his chin on his shoulder and was shoving both middle fingers and an outstretched tongue at the camera, while Niall on his other side had misappropriated the peace sign for something much more rude. Around the picture was an excess of rainbow tape, the symbolism of which Raphael hoped the others were not aware of, and on the opposite side, everyone had signed their name.

“Ace, you look like a fuckin' girl man,” Rook grunted, pointing at the image of Ace, who was doing a handstand in the picture, and Luvander quickly twitched the album away from Rook's grimy fingers and turned to the next pages, which featured various selfies that needed to be re-enacted by the people they featured, and then the one after that caused a minor uproar, because it showed Raphael standing awkwardly beside the Esarina and the Margrave Antoinette, the women's arms around each other and bright smiles across their faces.

“I can't believe you fucking met the fucking Esarina,” Compagnon shouted, banging his fist on the table, while Balfour had snatched the album out of Luvander's hand in a moment of distraction via Niall breaking out into offensive song to stare at the opposite page, which had a picture of himself and Amery, posing in front of Amery's motorcycle. Raphael yearned to say something comforting to him, to tell him about his brother who had been dead for a year, but Balfour's face closed off again and he handed the album back to Luvander before slipping away to the edge of the group. Ivory, too, was perching on his piano stool off to one side, watching the proceedings with a faint frown on his face, and Raphael dreaded the moment Luvander found a picture of him and his other Ivory together, being friendly or, worse, kissing.

Before that, though, Luvander reached a different page that made him freeze up in a stony parody of the delight that hadn't vanished off his face quite yet. He was staring so intently at this page without a single comment as to why that Niall tried once more to creep up on him and relieve him of the album, but Luvander's foot shot out and caught him in the ribs, sending him tumbling off the sofa and onto the floor with a curse. Luvander shook himself off and closed the album with a snap. He turned to Raphael, and his face was suddenly livid.

“What is this, some sort of prank?” he hissed, brandishing the album. “Did you think it would be funny? Were you trying to – to – _accuse_ me of something, is that it?”

There was a shocked silence, and Raphael whimpered into the rug, still unable to talk.

“Pathetic,” Luvander spat, and whirled from the room, his foot nearly crushing Raphael's nose on the way past, before any of them could hold him back. Ace slid off of Raphael's leg with a noise like a deflating balloon, and Magoughin let go of his wrists. Raphael bucked him off the rest of the way and pulled himself to his feet, finding himself at the mercy of several deeply suspicious stares.

“What the bleeding fuck,” said Rook, still hanging over the side of the sofa that Luvander had perched on.

“What was on the next page?” Jeannot asked Raphael, somewhat more productively, but Raphael only wiped his mouth and shook his head.

“Something... that was different in the other world,” he said, grimacing, and smoothed out his rumpled shirt. “I'm going to talk to him, excuse me.”

There were some warning noises of dissent, because everyone knew what sort of damage a stroppy Luvander was capable of inflicting on anyone who aggravated him, but Raphael ignored them and went after him with his shoulders squared and his stomach churning with both fear and an unasked question. He was pretty sure that the next page, the one that had brought Luvander up short, had featured him and Niall making out at the Pride parade in skimpy underpants, and while he could understand Luvander not wanting the others to see that, he would have expected him to just play it off with a joke, or be publically offended and start an argument about whether or not that obviously staged kiss had been a gross revenge on Niall's part for some entirely innocent mischief Luvander had enacted on him.

There was no sound coming from inside Luvander's room. Raphael knocked, and there was a pause, then something heavy and dull collided with the door and he jerked back in reflex. After waiting a moment, Raphael tentatively knocked again. This time, there were no projectiles, but a tired voice told him to piss off.

“Luvander,” Raphael said, “please, I can explain.”

He had no idea _how_ he was going to explain it, because this depended on Luvander's current level of disgust, but first of all he had to get inside that room, and, if possible, save his beloved photo album from coming to an ashy end in Luvander's fireplace. He was relieved when the door clicked open and Luvander stuck his head out, looking wary and ill-tempered, and, upon seeing that Raphael was alone, stepped aside to let him in. He spent some time fussing with the lock, then sighed and walked over to his bed, lowering himself on the floor next to it and leaning back against the mattress. The photo album lay beside him, unharmed.

“I looked at the rest,” Luvander said as Raphael sat down on his other side. “I saw those pictures, of you and Ivory...”

“If this is some sort of blackmail attempt,” Raphael said lightly, “I just want to point out that it was you who even made the others aware of the album. I wouldn't have said anything anyway, about...”

“About me being a flaming homosexual in more worlds than just one?” Luvander asked flatly. “Yeah, well. People who live in glass houses...”

Raphael swallowed down what he wanted to say and waited until Luvander had stopped pulling faces at himself. He watched as Luvander tugged the photo album in his lap and flicked through it until he reached the page with him and Niall entwined on the Pride wagon and scrunched up his nose.

“Niall though, really?” he muttered to himself, and turned the page to a picture of Raphael and Ivory with their hands entwined, walking in the parade. “You two,” he said, shaking his head. “I never would have thought. And yet here you are, looking like an old married couple. It's bizarre.”

“Yeah,” Raphael said sadly, “bizarre.”

Luvander looked at him, frowning, and poked his elbow in Raphael's arm. “Hey,” he murmured, “chin up, soldier. Plenty of fish in the sea. Right?”

“Right,” Raphael nodded and tried to pull himself together, but he must have still looked woebegone, because Luvander closed the album again, stroked his hand over the cover, and handed it back.

“Take it,” he sighed, “it's yours, anyway. I feel like a voyeur.”

“He says, after stealing people's private things and noseying about in them in front of all their friends,” Raphael grumbled, and the elbow in his side dug a little less carefully into his ribs in retaliation.

“That's standard airman practice,” Luvander sniffed, “I'm not going to apologise for that.”

“Suit yourself,” Raphael said, hugging the album to his chest. They were quiet for a while, and then Luvander listed to the side and put his head on Raphael's shoulder, and it was such a familiar and new gesture all at once that Raphael forgot to breathe for a moment.

“I'm so tired of it,” Luvander whispered, “I'm so tired of the charades and the flirting and the talking about girls like they're pieces of meat. I just want to kiss a nice boy and forget all that for an hour or two.”

Raphael thought of the night at the club on Tuesday Street, of regretting not having kissed Luvander back. Sleeping with Ivory had driven those thoughts from his head, but here they were again, snaking around him with their what ifs and their unexplored possibilities.

“Well,” Raphael said slowly, “I have on occasion been told that I'm a nice boy...”

Luvander snorted. “Who told you that, your childhood nanny? I -” Then his eyes grew round and large, and his lips fell into the shape of an _oh_ as the implications of those words caught up with him.

“I never had a nanny,” Raphael said, and kissed him.

Kissing Luvander was different from kissing Ivory in a lot of ways. Once he got over his initial surprise, Luvander kissed back fiercely, hungrily, pressing and squirming and constantly moving, insinuating his fingers into unprotected spaces, clutching and clinging. They ended up half sprawled on the floor, snogging like teenagers and grappling with each other, both laughing into the kiss. Luvander tasted faintly like chocolate and yeast from the brioches Niall had made that morning and which Luvander had proceeded to demolish steadily over the course of the day, and Raphael suddenly missed Ivory's minty, lemony freshness with a stabbing ache in his guts and gently pushed Luvander away.

“Sorry,” he said, breathless, “it's just, I...”

“I know,” Luvander said sadly, touching the tips of his fingers to his own lips. “It was nice, though, wasn't it?”

“Yeah,” Raphael agreed, “it was.”

They sat facing each other and didn't say anything for a long time. Then Raphael cleared his throat and asked if Luvander wanted some tea, and Luvander nodded, relieved, and turned his back on the door as Raphael stood up and walked over to it.

“I'm sorry,” Raphael said again, his hand on the key.

“Whatever for, babe,” Luvander said, and sounded far too cheerful for it to be genuine. “Go and make us some tea, and maybe I'll tell you a scandalous story about Matthew the stable boy back in my old village.”

“Sounds intriguing,” Raphael smiled, and went to stow his photo album safely away in his room before digging out one of the tea parcels labelled Caramel Sweetheart that he remembered Luvander being keen on in the other world, in the hope that it would cheer them both up.

*

For a week, life was unusually quiet at the Airman.

There were fewer raids and the ones that there were often ended with Adamo giving the signal for retreat before they'd found any Ke'Han camps. Luvander was absent a lot, which made Niall grumpy and subdued for lack of a verbal sparring partner, and Merritt, Evariste and Compagnon were all down with a summer cold, leading to some uninspired teasing about who had passed it on to who and how. It was hot, the kind of bright, glaring mid-summer heat that made it painful to go outside during the day, and Raphael made several bowls of tiramisu and jugs of iced tea that were received gratefully by the others and emptied in record time.

Then, one afternoon, Luvander came back from wherever he'd spent the day, looking tired and weary and overheated in his embroidered waistcoat despite the thin shirt underneath, and Niall had a little explosion from the depths of his armchair in the common room about feeling fucking neglected by his best friend. Luvander listened, leaning against the doorway, until Niall had ranted himself into exhausted silence, then he marched over to his armchair, planted his hands on the armrests either side of Niall, and said, very slowly: “Shut the fuck up,” before kissing him.

There were several gasps and the sounds of objects falling all around them, followed by a certain pitch of silence that could only be described as the quiet before a very violent, very noisy storm. This particular bad weather front never got unleashed, though, because against all expectations, Niall and Luvander did not stop kissing – in fact, Niall pulled Luvander closer by his tie, and Luvander climbed meekly into his lap, all without breaking contact.

Rook walked in, stopped dead in his tracks, and walked out again.

Nothing had changed the second time he came in, and he stood, mouth agape, looking around at the others for an explanation that wasn't forthcoming, until Ghislain broke the spell by flicking a wad of paper at the back of Luvander's head.

“Oi, you two, move it to your rooms,” he grunted, “or Rook's gonna have a very ugly fainting fit, and no one wants to be the one to clean up _that_ mess.”

Niall held up two middle fingers, still very much in the process of eating Luvander's face, and the other airmen grudgingly vacated the common room so as not to have to watch that progressing any further.

Raphael was both deeply impressed with Luvander's nerve and feeling uneasy about the others' response, or lack of response, since other than Ghislain, no one had actually said anything definitive yet on what they thought about such a blatant display of cindyness. He poured himself a glass of iced mint tea with shaking hands and went outside to sit in the shade behind the Airman building and calm himself down. He was joined by Ivory, who had somehow rescued the last remains of the latest batch of tiramisu and offered Raphael a second spoon, holding the bowl between them in the palm of one hand, the other spoon stuck in his mouth.

“Oh,” Raphael said, blinking rapidly, “thanks.”

They ate in silence, Raphael's insides strung tight by his nerves, until the bowl was empty and Ivory had licked his spoon clean.

“You knew about Luvander, didn't you?” Ivory said quietly as he put the bowl down on the ground with a soft clink. “Before this afternoon?”

Raphael considered lying, but Ivory already knew the answer anyway, and so he nodded hesitantly. Ivory hummed.

“Me, too,” he said, “or, I suspected.”

“You did?” Raphael said weakly. “And did you, um, also suspect about... Niall?”

“No,” Ivory said, pulling his feet up on the ledge they were sitting on and looking out over the dry grass. The sun was listing toward the horizon, pulled down by its own orange weight. Some of the tension in Raphael's chest eased, and he leaned back against the warm brick of the Airman behind him.

“Me neither. He's always so vocal about, well...”

“Fucking?” Ivory grinned, feral and mischievous.

“Fucking women,” Raphael muttered, feeling his cheeks colour.

“You're not,” Ivory pointed out, “vocal about fucking women.”

“Neither are you,” Raphael retorted.

“No, I'm not,” Ivory conceded, and Raphael couldn't shake the feeling that they were just confirming what the other said in an endless back and forth loop of layered meaning and subtle insinuations that might or might not refer to something more than the words themselves conveyed.

The next morning, something that Ivory had once referred to as the Spanish Inquisition was waiting in the kitchen for Niall, who was unusually late in getting up.

Raphael was making tea when Niall came in, his ordinarily tame hair in outrageous peaks and troughs, clad only in his underwear and a necklace of hickeys, neither of which was particularly noteworthy on him, except that he'd just come out of Luvander's room – walked, in fact, as opposed to being bodily thrown out by a grumpy half-asleep Luvander who didn't appreciate being woken up in the wee hours of the morning by somebody jumping on his bed and wailing like a human raid siren.

“Morning,” said Ghislain ominously, leaning back against the window sill and unsubtly flexing his biceps.

“Mooorning,” Niall replied slowly, looking around like he was judging the atmosphere in the room.

“So,” Magoughin said, just as ominously as Ghislain. “You're sleeping with Luvander now.”

“I'm sleeping with Luvander now,” Niall echoed, squaring his shoulders. “So?”

A viscous silence churned around them, stifling and oppressive. Niall squinted at them and answered his own question by muttering “ _so_ , I owe him breakfast, is what” under his breath before shuffling over to the pantry and staying in there for rather longer than it took to find a loaf of bread, two eggs and a handful of cherries in there.

“Guys, all that this means is that Niall and Luvander have found yet another discipline they can have ridiculous competitions in,” Ace piped up from where he was doing chin-ups on the door frame. “Business as usual, am I right?”

There was some muttering and resentful agreement, and Niall made pistol hands at Ace for the support. Ace mimed being shot in the stomach and fell to the floor, and suddenly things really were business as usual again, and Raphael remembered how to breathe.

Over the course of the day, the humid heat kept piling on itself, weighing down on the air and everyone's mood, until at last the first sounds of thunder started rattling in the distance. When it came, the storm was so loud it drowned out everything else, even Ivory's listless piano playing, and sucked up all the remaining light within moments, leaving the Airman suspended in a roaring, pounding darkness, rain lashing the windows and lightning sending skeleton shapes skittering across the walls for seconds before disappearing again.

Raphael sat in his room with the lights off and wondered if his portal in the mountains would ever come back, and if it did, how big his chances were of ending up in the same alternate world if he went through it.

He was startled out of his gloomy musings by a sharp knock on his door. When he went to open it, Ivory stood outside with a book in his hand, looking pale and jumpy, and Raphael dimly recalled his other Ivory telling him that he wasn't fond of thunderstorms during one of the nights they had spent tangled up in each other on Ivory's bed, barely sleeping.

“You left this in the common room,” Ivory said hesitantly and held out the book. It was the poetry collection Ghislain had given him, and Raphael took it gratefully, because leaving any personal possessions lying around in the common room after dark was always a risk, and checked that it hadn't been vandalised yet.

“Thanks,” he said. Ivory nodded, but didn't leave. “Do you want to come in? I have tea.”

For a moment, something like relief seemed to flicker over Ivory's face, and Raphael stepped back to let him in and lit one of his lamps. He poured Ivory a cup from a pot of Morning Thunder tea, added a generous splash of milk from a small jug he'd brought and handed it over. Ivory frowned, his gaze caught on Raphael's elbow.

“You do have the same cardigan,” he said slowly, “and you know how I take my tea, and you made me an entire pizza that no one else liked.”

Nervously, Raphael shifted his weight from one foot to the other and picked up his own cup of tea, then put it back down again.

“I – got to know your alternate self a bit, while I was,” he waved his hand around in a limp imitation of a portal. “I probably picked it up there.”

“And the cardigan?” Ivory asked, leaning his head to the side, an inscrutable expression on his face. Raphael felt himself flushing and smoothed one hand over the faded green wool. “My brother knitted it for me,” Ivory murmured. “If I gave it away...”

“I didn't steal it,” Raphael said quickly, desperately, and Ivory nearly smiled.

“No, I didn't think you did,” he said softly. “Can I see the rest of your album?”

For a moment, Raphael was petrified, then he opened his mouth to say that he was very sorry, but the album was private, except what came out was a small, wavering “okay,” and he walked over to his night table to pull out the photo album. Ivory followed, startling him when he turned and Ivory was right behind him, then sat on his bed with the album, waiting until Raphael had lit another lamp and settled down beside him.

“It's, um,” Raphael began, but couldn't actually think of anything to say to explain the content away, and so remained silent while Ivory carefully leafed through the album. Ivory didn't say anything even when he saw the pictures of his alternate self and Raphael kissing, not until the very last page, when he traced the other Ivory's tiny note with the tip of a finger and finally looked up.

“You were there a week,” he said, his voice strangely tight.

“He, I mean, you and – and the Raphael from that world – they were, well,” Raphael said timidly, wringing his hands in his lap, “they were lovers, of a sort, but not at the time I was there, well, it was complicated. But I think they... cared for each other.”

“I see,” Ivory said, tracing the words again. “And did you also care for him?”

“Yes,” Raphael whispered, “very much.”

Ivory closed the album then and put it back into its drawer. The rain hissed outside like a many-headed snake, and Ivory's gaze lingered over the rainbow flag on Raphael's armchair, its colours muted in the dim light.

“I'm not him,” he said at last, sitting very straight and still on Raphael's bed, though for once he did not look in control, but awkward and uncertain. “I'll never be him, but...”

“But?” Raphael prompted reverently. His heart was shaking apart in his chest.

“Maybe... I should try to be more like him, if you liked him so much,” Ivory finished quietly, mumbling the last words, and Raphael couldn't bear it anymore, he had to reach out and catch up one of Ivory's hands in his own and squeeze.

“You don't have to,” he whispered, “you're already perfect.”

A smile did appear on Ivory's lips then, like a sliver of sunrise after a dark and stormy night, and it widened into a thin, tender smirk.

“Prove it,” he challenged, and Raphael knew exactly how.

*

On the one year anniversary of Raphael's return to his world, the day that Pride had fallen on the year before in the other, Luvander lured Adamo out of the Airman with a bogus summons from the Basquiat, and flew up to the highest point of the building on Yesfir's back to hoist Raphael's old rainbow flag there.

Raphael, going for a walk with Ivory, looked up and saw the colours flapping in the wind. He slipped his hand into his boyfriend's, and felt proud.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to cry I mean listen to piano covers of Bon Jovi songs, a quick YouTube search should yield at least some of the songs mentioned in the fic! Thank you for reading!


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